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WHITHER BOUND 
IN MISSIONS 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


Marks oF A Wortp CuristT1an 

ButLpinG wirH Ixpia 

ScHOoOOLs witH A MeEssaGe In INpDIA 
Contacts witH Non-CuristTiAn CuLtrures 
DrEvoLuTION IN Mission ADMINISTRATION 





ONE Na EEE, 


“ 
MAY 13 1926 | 







WHITHER B 
IN MISSIONS 


BY 4 cles 


DANIEL JOHNSON FLEMING, Pu.D. 


COUNCIL OF CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 


Student Department, Y.W.C.A., 600 Lexington Avenue 
Student Department, Y.M.C.A., 347 Madison Avenue 
New York City 


Distributed by 
ASSOCIATION PRESS 


New York: 347 Mapison AVENUE 


1925 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY 


THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF 
YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 


To “COUSIN JENNIE” 
AND 
Tue Rev. Sm JAMES C. R. EWING 
D.D., LL.D.» D.LITT., K.C.LE. 


in whose home in India the author caught his first 
enthusiasm for the Christian enterprise overseas 






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PREFACE 


Ir is part of the glory of the modern missionary 
movement that it has not waited for criticism from 
outside. We doubt whether any profession has 
voluntarily and planfully subjected itself to more 
searching survey and appraisal than missions since 
1910. The fundamental positions have remained 
unchanged. More clearly now than at any previ- 
ous time is it realized that the world’s welfare de- 
mands that Jesus Christ and His way be made 
known to every people. 

In the last fifteen years, however, advances in 
method and attitude have come so rapidly that 
there is danger that the constituency back of mis- 
sions will not keep up with the changes which are 
bound to shape the movement in the future. The 
giving constituency should know about these 
changes and share in the consideration of the prob- 
lems for the future which are raised. No one 
should want a gap to grow between the missionary 
enterprise as it will actually exist and the concep- 
tion of that enterprise held by those who so heartily 
support it. 

We are authoritatively informed that the whole 
missionary movement needs rethinking and re- 
stating.’ For one thing, while in some parts change 


*Report of the Foreign Missions Conference of North 
America, 1923, p. 109. 
vii 


Vili PREFACE 


has been coming very slowly, in some major areas 
for overseas effort the cultural scene has changed 
more profoundly in the last ten years than in whole 
cycles of time previously. Discerning missionary 
statesmen feel that their most significant problem 
is not the getting of more men and more money 
for old work, but the catching of God’s leading in 
new ways. 

Furthermore, many of these changes in attitude 
and method are a part, as is quite natural, of the 
prevailing thought. movements of our age. We 
believe that there are many, not now interested in 
missions, who would find their sympathy and en- 
thusiasm for this work developing if they only 
knew how modern it really is. 

We want, then, to think ahead with this move- 
ment, see some of the tendencies that are working 
in it, and be ready for that flexibility which must 
characterize an agency through which God can 
continue adequately to work today. The effort has 
been to suggest possible and more immediate 
changes in attitude and method rather than to 
attempt any ultimate or philosophical answer to 
the question raised by the title. It will be recog- 
nized that where the number of societies engaged 
in this work runs up into the hundreds with mani- 
fold activities among most varied peoples at dif- 
ferent stages of economic, national, and religious 
development, sweeping general statements are 
either out of place, or must be taken as an estimate 
of the general trend. 

A special effort has been made to give the 
opinion of nationals on the various issues raised. 


PREFACE ix 


For we are their partners in the world task, and 
increasingly we find our common interest is helped 
by giving full consideration to their judgments. 

This volume could scarcely have been written 
were it not for the author’s contact from year to 
year with a stream of alert and ofttimes brilliant 
missionaries on furlough, who, with deepened con-~ 
victions as to the world’s need of Christ, are eager 
to study through their problems and go back for 
better service. Furthermore, it is a pleasure grate- 
fully to acknowledge obligation to many frank and 
sincere friends, and especially to my wife, who 
have read the manuscript in whole or in part and 
whose invaluable suggestions have corrected or 
enriched its message. 


DANIEL JOHNSON FLEMING. 


New York City, 
January, 1925. 


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CONTENTS 


PAGE 

CHAPTER I: ERADICATING A SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 1 

The reflection of prevalent attitudes of supe- 

riority in missions—Growing resentment over 

the western dominating type—Modern judgment 

with reference to relative racial capacity—Re- 

sulting observations for missions—The call for . 

a fitting racial humility. 


CHAPTER II: MUTUALITY IN GIVING AND RECEIVING . 23 
The rise of mutuality—Some of its characteris- 
tics—Contributions to a common cultural evo- 
lution—The special possibilities of interchange 
within the world’s Christian fellowship—vVa- 
rious adjustments suggested by the ideal of 
mutuality. 


Cuaprer III: THe West as PArt OF THE Non- 
CHRISTIAN WORLD Hie ume tae. | 
Evidence of the fact—The West as cers see 
us—Sensitiveness among American students— 
Three resulting corollaries. 


CHAPTER IV: Fruit—THE Most EFFECTIVE APOLO- 
ETIO CON fee he oe is re Pura hota jal cee tem on ei OBE 
The missionary and his message no longer an 
isolated apologetic—Proofs passing from origins 
to consequences—The resulting enhanced obli- 
gation on western Christians—And on those 
who go abroad in other capacities than pro- 
fessional missionaries—Our most convincingly 
Christian opportunity. 
xi 


Xil CONTENTS 


CHAPTER V: Gon’s HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 


An earlier, harsher attitude—God not working 
exclusively through Christianity — Readjust- 
ments in vocabulary—Thankfulness for reforms 
in non-Christian faiths—The need for Chris- 
tianity at its best—Recognition of grave ethical 
and philosophical -disparities. 


CHAPTER VI: THE COMBINATION OF CONVICTION AND 

TEACHABLENESS LER Te LEE Mache ws) vee 

The missionary as advocate—However, there 

are novel situations demanding fresh judgment 

—Persons qualified for this wanted by discern- 

ing leaders—Three reasons for this type of 
mind—Serious dangers. 


CHAPTER VII: THE OCCUPATION OF NEw CONTINENTS 


Geographical expansion and Christian permea- 
tion—-Today, also, calls with great pioneering 
tasks-—-Signs of a reinterpretation of the mis- 
sionary movement—Present missionary organi- 
zations are reaching out toward larger service— 
Some precautions—Retaining the challenge to 
great adventure. 


Cuapter VIII: Facina THE HANDICAP OF A DIVIDED 
CA URGH 3 p08 | a ihcdiO oer PO eae en Care ee 
Divided strategy and competitive equipment— 
Evidence of dissatisfaction and danger-——As na- 
tionals see our  sectarianism—Rising above 


denominationalism—An unmistakable demand , 


on western Christians. 


CHAPTER IX: Givina Way To NATIONALS .. . 


The significance of growing acclimated ° 


Churches—-Illustrations of their growing in- 
fluence—Evidences of a certain lag in recogniz- 
ing the new order—-Five adjustments caused by 
the centrality of the rising Churches abroad. 


PAGE 


78 


94 


119 


142 


154 


CONTENTS xiii 


CHAPTER X: ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY AND TYPE OF 
UY CYR cerca co ets uate leak Mee SMa a EL i ye eS 

Incontrovertible evidence that missionaries are 
still needed—However, the time has passed for 
recruiting in terms of quantity—Called, located, 
and retained at the call of the Church—Adjust- 
ments in organization, policy, and education— 
Five stages in mission work. 


CHAPTER XI: DEVELOPING CHRISTIAN WORLD-MIND- 
PEER e nes ete RRO ik ot ot ality oatnha Seearen sled SEL OG 
Priorities in Christian fundamentals—The de- 
velopment of an international mind—Develop- 
ments in acquainting people with the missionary 
enterprise—Criteria for addresses and literature. 


CHAPTER XII: THe INEXHAUSTIBLE REALITY BACK OF 
IMPSRTONS Chi A sive ical cilia (cath a0 5h) RAN (NON eRe nay PRD 
The purpose and character of God—Making pos- 
sible a spiritual fellowship—Characterized by 
an urge to service—And full of promise for the 
future. 





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WHITHER BOUND 
IN MISSIONS 


CHAPTER I 
ERADICATING A SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 
I 


A HUNDRED years ago European civilization 
naively assumed that the Caucasian had been made 
by God to rule the world, and took it for granted 
that there was only one culture worthy of the 
name. The existing political and economic pre- 
dominance of western peoples engendered a feel- 
ing of superiority. Throughout much of the 
nineteenth century, western civilization extended 
what helpful influences it possessed from above 
downward, rather than straight across from 
brother man to brother man. Our Anglo-Saxon 
temperament encouraged this assumption of su- 
periority. A tendency to master and direct made 
it seem natural for us to impose our wills on a 
more yielding and passive people. 

Even Christianity, as popularly understood, 
made it possible for one to nourish a sense of 
superiority. Christianity began with a great em- 

1 


2 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


phasis on love. But in time that love came to be 
considered typically Christian where nothing was 
given in return and where there was an essential 
inequality between the parties. Christian brother- 
hood was defined by the Church solely in terms of 
benevolence. Hence the popular conception of 
“charity” is tinged with condescension. In fact, 
to most people charity seems most Christian when 
there is no mutual exchange. Similarly, the altru- 
ism of early Protestantism took the form of sharing 
with others, but not of receiving from them. The 
modern emphasis on democracy, however, is mak- 
ing us see how un-Christian it is to think of 
others as beneath us, and how love, to be Chris- 
tian, must recognize the essential equality of the 
two parties concerned. . 
As long as the characteristic element in Christian 
love was merely giving without return, it did not 
offend our Christian sense to have a strong nation 
dominate a weaker one providing its rule was 
supposed to be for the weaker nation’s good, or to 
have missionaries patronize another people as long 
as the motives were quite unselfish. But we now 
see that Christian love includes democratic respect 
and justice as well as benevolence. To mere kind- 
liness is added a genuine solicitude that other 
people may be free and equipped to share in the 
duties and responsibilities of the new world order. 
Under this fuller conception of Christian love indi- 
viduals and nations will not be less called to serve; 
but consciousness of call will not be accompanied 
by a belittling of the recipients of this goodwill. 
For it will be seen that democracy is inconsistent 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 3 


with a monopoly of call by any one group—that 
to be Christian is to assert that, in their several 
ways, each nation and race is called to serve.' 

It was in this earlier atmosphere of the assump- 
tion of racial and cultural superiority that modern 
missions took their rise. It would be surprising, 
therefore, if the feeling of superiority, so general 
in the West, had not been reflected in certain mis- 
sionary attitudes. Here and there it crept into 
the literature of early missions, taking it for 
granted that just as the West had the only worthy 
culture, so their religion also was the only faith 
embodying any truth. This spirit of condescension 
has not yet become extinct for many are still able 
to sing with complacency 


Can we, whose souls are lighted 
With wisdom from on high, 
Can we, to men benighted 
The lamp of light deny? 


Until very recent years the average call to work 
abroad more or less unconsciously assumed west- 
ern superiority. It was a romantic leadership 
which was held out to any young student who 
would go to the Orient. He was to stamp his in- 
fluence on other peoples, share in making a new 
world, shape the destinies of backward but 
changing countries, and lay out the lines upon 
which future development was to take place. Many 
of the interpretations of Africa and the East were 
tinged with a patronizing note. To such an extent 


*On the thought of the last two paragraphs see an ad- 
dress by Pres. A. C. McGiffert, in Religious Education, 
vol. 16, pp. 131-6. 


4 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


has this point of view been absorbed that the head 
of one of our largest language schools for young 
missionaries has declared that one of his chief > 
responsibilities is to endeavor to eradicate from 
their minds false ideas of their future task. 

A missionary now in his second term in India 
thus reviews his earlier years of service: 


I say that I was ignorant and conceited. I knew 
next to nothing of Indian history, Indian lan- 
guage, Indian thought; above all I was profoundly 
ignorant of Indian character and psychology. 
Nevertheless, what I had read and heard from: 
missionary sources had made me regard myself as 
commissioned to enlighten and uplift a needy and 
degraded people, who were crying aloud for my 
help. The altruistic element in this was, no doubt, 
excellent; but it was inevitably accompanied by 
a self-sufficiency and an egotism, which, I fear, 
may in practice have frequently overlaid the altru- 
ism. It is hard for a young man, whose thought 
about his missionary vocation has been framed in 
the atmosphere of crisis and urgent need, to 
achieve that modesty of attitude in dealing with 
Indians which is characteristic of all really suc- 
cessful missionaries and administrators of an older 
generation. Yet without such an attitude it is im- 
possible for either missionary or administrator to 
gain the confidence and esteem of the people. 


Moreover, when a young missionary finally 
reaches the field a host of insidious influences 
may support and develop a nascent sense of su- 
periority. His salary, though meager enough 
according to western standards, in some areas per- 
mits him to run an establishment with a retinue 
of servants far more elaborate than most of the 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY D5 


people with whom he associates have. Health rea- 
sons usually demand that he should have a better 
house, or travel higher class. Sometimes he is 
put in charge of work over gray-haired and ex- 
perienced nationals. An artificial power surrounds 
him because of his control of a western purse, 
enabling him to engage and to pay workers. 
Inferior economic surroundings unconsciously 
suggest inferior peoples. The material and insti- 
tutional means of helping folks up to higher eco- 
nomic and educational levels tend to develop a 
sense of generosity, altruism and self-satisfaction. 
Often many of the little devices in the missionary’s 
house, equipment, or ways of doing things are 
copied, and imitation is an insidious form of flat- 
tery. A courtesy-loving Orient by instinct defers | 
to one who comes to them in the capacity of a” 
teacher. There is something about administration 
in most foreign fields that gradually makes a man 
unwilling to be talked back to unless he is very 
much on guard against the tendency. Among some 
groups where the spirit of nationalism has not 
developed there may still be a definite inferiority 
complex toward white people. The very fact that 
we possess special skill in administering our own 
type of institutions inclines us to rate ourselves 
above those to whom these institutions are still 
novel. With such suggestions, is it any wonder 
that some yield? 

One of the abiest missionarics now in India, 
looking back upon his experience of over forty- 
three years in that land said that he regretted, 


6 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


among other errors, one serious mistake which he 
had made. He had not sufficiently estimated the 
potential capacity of the people. Therefore he 
had not expected as much from them as he should; 
and in consequence he feels that they had not 
developed and done as much as they might have 
done. Blessed is the one who is forewarned 
against unconscious influences which encourage 
the sense of superiority. 

Not all of the responsibility of possessing a right 
racial attitude, however, rests on the person who 
goes abroad. Before they reach the field they 
share attitudes of mind current in the West— 
often attitudes not helpful to the young missionary. 
One whose professional work brings him into touch 
with a large proportion of the junior missionarics 
coming to China complains that many of them 
come out “with the attitude that any condition 
they discover among the Chinese which is not in 
accordance with western traditions and ideals is 
inferior.” ? The highest codrdinating missionary 
body in North America has shown its sensitive- 
ness to this danger by giving a whole session to 
a discussion of whether or not even the churches 
of the West do not instill points of view which 
limit the usefulness of their missionaries, and 
display attitudes, such as a sense of superiority 
due to our wealth and prestige, a pride of racc 
due to the present position of the white peoples, 
and an assertive quality naturally found in the 


pote Report of the Foreign Missions Conference, 1922, 
p. 126. 


@? 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 7 


propagandist, which as a matter of fact hinder 
the work abroad. 

Many missions have gladly acknowledged that 
nationals of good judgment, of whom there are 
very many, have most valuable points of view 
growing out of their intimate knowledge of local 
conditions. By such missions joint councils have 
been arranged to make their wisdom effective. 
But where this has not yet been done, a serious 
sense of inequality is the unfortunate but unavoid- 
able implication in the minds of these nationals. 


II 


Increasingly this attitude of cultural superiority 
on the part of the West is being resented. Asia 
and Africa have awakened to a new sense of race 
respect and corporate personality. The aggressive 


or domineering type of missionary is not wanted. 


The field secretary of one of our largest so- 
cieties, out of his long experience in China, tells 
us in a personal letter that: 


Young China will accept no service given in the 
spirit of condescending superiority. The man who , 
feels called to China to lord it over God’s heritage, 
a superman of Divine grace, would better change 
his mind now and save the board the expense of 
transportation later. But the man who in all hu- 
mility and love would go to China for the service 
of God and the people cannot go too quickly. 


It is a great help occasionally to see ourselves 
as others see us. “We welcome men and women,” 


*Tbid., 1923, pp. 154-170. 


8 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


recently said an outstanding Chinese leader, “who 
come to China definitely to help rather than to 
dominate, to learn as well as to teach, to be friends 
rather than to be leaders, to be sympathetic and 
not dogmatic. Such men and women are more 
needed in China today than ever before.” A Chi- 
nese at one time general secretary of the Y. M. 
C. A. for China, and later the government’s secre- 
tary of foreign affairs, says that 


. .. the most serious mistake in the mission- 
ary propaganda in China is that, in the early and 
even in the later decades of the nineteenth century, 
the missionaries had a wrong conception of the 
moral and intellectual strength of the Chinese. 
They took for granted that the Chinese were an 
uncivilized race whom they must instruct and take 
into tutelage, and in consequence regarded them as 
incapable of being placed in responsible positions. 
Their policy was to develop and train their Chinese 
workers up to a certain point which would only 
fit them to be their assistants.* 


At a recent denominational conference a Chinese 
delegate set forth the Chinese point of view as 
follows: 


Intelligent Chinese do not care to work with the 
type of missionary who pretends to treat the 
Chinese as equals, placing them in positions of 
nominal leadership or inviting them to meetings 
of trustees or committees where they sit as silent 
listeners or as speakers whose words carry no 
weight. I would ask the missionary two things: 
first, give the Chinese every chance to do things 
for themselves; second, treat the Chinese workers 
as equals. 


“International Review of Missions, vol. 5, p. 85. 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 9 


All the nationals who have been quoted are too 
big natured to speak in other than a sweetly 
reasonable way. Gently, yet firmly, they are 
saying that there are lingering even if unconscious 
racial predilections on the part of western mission- 
aries, and that we have been too slow in sensing 
the conception of nationals as to what is involved 
in proper treatment. There are thoughtful ob- 
servers who feel that the United States as a nation 
is complacently walking right toward the worst 
sort of conflict—racial war. Whether or not this 
is so, the missionary enterprise should un- 
mistakably glow throughout with Christian 
brotherhood. 

On the basis of a questionnaire to eighty-two 
leading Japanese workers, Prof. U. Kawaguchi, 
Ph.D., concludes an exceptionally significant paper 
on the missionary’s task from the standpoint of 
the Japanese Church as follows: 


The sooner the missionary delegates his paternal 
instinct, his desire to possess and to control, his 
endeavor to direct and to lead, to his Japanese 
co-laborer, the sooner will his ideal of an in- 
dependent, autonomous, native Church see its 
realization; and the more lasting will be the period 
of his usefulness in the accomplishment of the 
Christian program of the Church.® 


Tilak, one of India’s noblest singers, put the same 
thought into song: 


*“The Christian Movement in Japan, Korea and For- 
mosa,” 1923, p. 111. 


10 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


baat: upon self you have come to us to bring 

us Christ; 

For us you have given life and all things, so that 
to our debt there is no end. 

Yet will tou heed one small request which I have 
still to proffer? 

You are father and mother, we helpless infants: 
enough of this relationship now! 


You have driven God afar by making yourselves 
gods: when will you cast off this sin? 

You have set up for yourselves a kingdom of 
slaves: do not call it a kingdom of God. 

We dance as puppets, whilst you hold the strings: 
how long shall this buffoonery endure? 

How long will you keep us dead? Hath not God 
eyes to see? 

Let us swim, let us sink or die; give us leastways 
the chance of swimming. 

Pack Be all your doctrines, and let us first find 

hrist. 

Be not angry with me; I am but a poor messenger, 
who speaks what he is bidden. 

Come, be to us brothers and sisters! all else we can 
settle then. 


iit 


Modern judgment with reference to relative 
racial capacity has a bearing upon this question. 
In catching this judgment certain graphic figures 
are useful. We have learned that the group capac- 
ity of a people is best represented, not by a dot or 
line, but by an area. Suppose all the individuals 
of a group have been examined and their capac- 
ities determined. If a curve of the results were 
plotted, with the vertical coordinates representing 
the numbers concerned, and the horizontal co- 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 11 


ordinates the various capacities, we would secure 
a characteristic area (Fig. 1). For example, it 
would be found that comparatively few individ- 
uals (AB) have a very high capacity (OB). Also 
comparatively few individuals (CD) will be 
marked by a very low capacity (OD). In other 
words, there would be relatively few individuals 
of genius, and relatively few imbeciles. The 
greatest number (EF) would have a central ca- 
pacity (OF). 


Momb ers 


{ \capad- 
8 tres 





I "Gg ,. 

The relative capacities of two groups could be 
compared by the shape and position of two areas. 
Conceivably the results might be as in Fig. 2. Here 
the capacity of each individual in group A is 
greater than that of any individual in group B. 
Many a slaveholder used to think of his slaves as 
constituting a group wholly beneath his own in 
human faculties. Such a diagram could picture 
the way a Brahman has been accustomed to think 
of the pariah. There are still many who think of 
their race as so markedly superior to another that 
this diagram could fitly represent their thought. 

The overwhelming expert opinion, however, is 


12 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


that there is a very considerable amount of over- 
lapping between the races in the matter of ability 
(Fig. 3). Group A has a few individuals superior 
to any in B. Group B has a few individuals in- 
ferior to any in A. But the amount of overlapping 
in the shaded portion is proportionate to the 
amount of common-ability. For every individual 
of group A within the shaded portion, an indi- 


Numbers 





Fig. a2. 


vidual in group B can be found with exactly equal 
capacity. 

Lastly, there is general unanimity that great 
differences exist between the various races and 
peoples in regard to actual experience and attain- 
ment. But this does not settle the question of 
native ability. It has been customary for many 
to assign these differences in attainments to orig- 
inal differences in nature. But thus far it has 
been practically impossible to separate the effects. 
of original nature from the effects due to social 
environment and training. Any exact measure- 
ments of the differences between two groups have 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 13 


to be interpreted in the light both of original na- 
ture and of training. We have to acknowledge 
that at present we do not possess the technique by 
which we can determine differences in relative 
racial capacity, and that, therefore, it has not yet 
been proved that one race is inferior to another. 
But neither has the opposite been proved—that 
all races have equal native ability. In fact, there 
is a very strong probability that the various peoples 
do differ somewhat in natural endowment al- 
though, as we have said, the fact of such differ- 





ences as well as their amount and nature have yet 
to be determined with scientific accuracy. Graphi- 
cally, this probability for the various peoples can 
be represented by a group of distribution curves 
with different average capacities (A, B, C, D in 
Fig. 4). 

It should be noted that all the seeming 
differences between the various races and peoples 
appear very small compared with the vast 


_ difference which separates man from the nearest 


14 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


animal (see Fig. 4). Furthermore even the alleged 
differences between the various peoples seem smal: 
compared with the wide range of variation within 
any one race or people (again see Fig. 4). With 
these last two statements in mind, we can under- 
stand what is meant by the assertion of the funda- 
mental unity of human nature. 


AG Dp 


Races of ej; 


Animals 


Fr. af 


IV 


Several important observations for missions 
come from a consideration of this question. One 
is that we should not think of ourselves more 
highly than we ought to think. There should be 
a certain wholesome humility. This is a lesson 
that the Anglo-Saxon, especially, ought to take 
to heart. It is very easy for the white race to as- 
sume its superiority as a matter of course, and to 
do unconsciously a multitude of little things which 
rankle harmfully in the hearts of another people. 
Consecration on the part of the missionary does 
not necessarily protect him from this. Let it sink 
into his consciousness that there are many ways 
of accounting for superior achievements without 


- 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 15 


assuming superior capacity. The rapid develop- 
ment of self-consciousness in Asia, and in parts 
of Africa, has so heightened sensitiveness to atti- 
tudes of superiority, that western peoples must 
shake themselves out of objectionable ways that 
have become unconsciously habitual. Just as we 
have given up the idea of the divine right of kings, 
and are giving up the age-long conception of male 
superiority, we will very likely have to give up 
the flattering delusion of decided racial superior- 
ity. It is interesting that one board has taken the 
precaution of placing, for a time, each new recruit 
to Japan under a Japanese minister, in order to 
develop from the first a proper attitude. 

We can see, also, the right of each person to be 
treated as an individual and not classed in a 
group. The human mind has a distinct tendency 
toward classification. We tend to select the domi- 
nant traits of another race; associate these traits 
with certain external racial marks such as slant 
eye, dark skin, black, straight hair; and then 
assign the traits to every individual who has the 
given external marks. We tend to set up a set 
of mental pigeon-holes, each the abstract average 
of a group, and then we dump individuals into 
these pigeon-holes on the basis of some external 
sign. We forget that when we talk about the 
characteristics of a race as a whole, we are dealing 
with an abstraction that has no existence in nature. 

In this way peoples have made such generaliza- 
tions as that: all Hindus are untruthful; all west- 
erners are materialistic; all Japanese are tricky; 
all Chinese are honest, etc. Many do not realize 


16 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


that there is a distribution curve for any race 
with respect to any quality (such as in Fig. 1). 
The particular individual before you may be in 
the line AB or the line CD, te. he may stand 
extraordinarily high or extraordinarily low in 
capacity, or honesty, or dependability, or what- 
ever quality is being considered. It is a mark of 
psychological immaturity to think of members of 
another race as though they had a common con- 
science, a fixed sense of honor, a unified financial 
interest, a single head, or heart, or life. Mission- 
aries are among the first to learn not to hang 
labels on a complex people, and then ever after 
interpret them by the label instead of by the indi- 
vidual reality. The rest of us must be on our 
guard against this insidious habit of men’s 
thinking. 

Another significant conviction for missionaries 
comes from a study of the extensive overlapping © 
in ability between any two races (Fig. 3). This 
overlapping is so decided, even when we allow for 
the more extreme judgments of inter-racial differ- 
ences, that we can repudiate the idea that one race 
is ordained permanently to be hewers of wood and 
drawers of water for another. One race, sup- 
posedly inferior, will not permanently need a dif- 
ferent type of cducation from that of a race, 
supposedly superior. Each will need a type of 
education suited, to its present needs, but we 
should not think that education for Negroes must 
always and of necessity be industrial, while that 
of the whites may be more literary. There is too 
much overlapping between the races for this. 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 17 


There is a need of various types of education, in- 
volving more or less head or hand work, but from 
Fig. 3 it will be seen that for any given type suit- 
able numbers of each race should be selected. 

Again, if we were wishing to select a hundred 
people who are to be quite superior to another 
hundred, one of the most foolish ways would be 
to choose them by race. Selecting one hundred 
persons at random from one race, supposedly su- 
perior, would by no means give you a group uni- 
formly superior to another hundred chosen at 
random from a supposedly inferior race. Mis- 
sionaries have found that moderatorships and 
chairmanships and secretaryships do not need to 
go to whites as whites. The modern missionary 
does not assume that he is a natural leader just 
because he belongs to the white race, or that any 
white university graduate in a mission college can 
teach any subject to any member of a darker race. 
The selection of leadership by means of race alone 
would be a very inefficient method of procedure. 
If missionaries want to select youths for training 
in India, they will not reject every mess movement 
convert as such, and accept every individual who 
has sprung from a higher caste as such. They 
know that it will be vastly more efficient to apply 
some of the methods of selecting superior individ- 
uals regardless of race or caste. 

This discussion may make us more ready fo see 
the good in another people. If the facts as to the 
difference in racial capacity could be correctly 
represented by Fig. 2 instead of Fig. 3 we might 
justifiably be blind to the attainments of another 


18 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


people. But a realization of the extensive over- 
lapping may strengthen in us “the will to believe” 
with reference to aptitude in another people. We 
rejoice, therefore, that widespread among mission- 
ary candidates is an attitude or frame of mind 
which is expectant with reference to the capacity — 
and attainments of other peoples. 

The present stage of knowledge concerning rela- 
tive racial capacity should give us great confidence 
that, given the right sort of training, we can find in 
any group the leadership it needs at any given time. 
We associate a sort of elaborate technique with 
those who lead here in the West; that is, we think 
of them as using typewriters, amanuenses, card- 
filing systems, and a great deal of machinery of 
various kinds. Furthermore, we expect our 
leaders to have a broad view of world movements 
and of ecclesiastical systems. While in many mis- 
sion lands we may not be able to get the equivalent 
of an experienced western superintendent or 
bishop, it may not be necessary to utilize such ad- 
vanced efficiency. It may not be that they need 
all the western paraphernalia and all the western 
vision that we bring in when we go to them as 
superintendents. The point to remember is, we 
very likely will find in any community ability for 
the kind of leadership that that community needs 
at the time. 

All tests point toward a “probability curve” sim- 
ilar to Fig. 1. Each group will have its AB men 
and women. And these AB individuals will be 
much superior to the average person belonging to 
another group whose average capacity may be 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY Ag 


greater than their group. The Christians from 
among the outcastes of India, for example, must 
not be thought of as uniformly inferior. With 
scientific certainty we can expect to find among 
them men of superior gifts, men of marked abil- 
ity, the raw materia! for leadership. The existence 
of AB men in every group should give us a sure 
basis for stimulating the faith and courage of 
Asiatic and African peoples in their struggle with 
the vast social and ethical problems which they 
face. Instead of doing everything for people in 
mission lands, or taking everything to them, we 
shall hope to draw forth all that is latently present 
within. The conviction that God-given leadership 
can be found in any people is an additional assur- 
ance of the reasonableness of the missionary enter- 
prise. It encourages us to aim at a program that 
is big, and worthy of the persons with whom we 
are working. 

Eradication of the feeling of superiority is bring- 
ing about a change in missionary nomenclature. 
There are good words which have picked up an 
unfortunate or un-Christian connotation. Unde- 
sirable associations have grown up about them. 
All unconsciously the user is affected by the de- 
rogatory implications of the word. Hence some 
words need to be purged, rescued, or abandoned. 

Expressions betokening possession of the Church 
abroad on the part of the West are being given up. 
The reports of missionary societies used to be full 
of the first person possessive—‘“our gospel,” “our 
Christians,” “our converts,” “our African mission 
field,’ “our high school pupils,’ “our native 


20 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


churches.” They informed their supporters that 
“our Indian Christians are learning to give to 
God,” or spoke of “representatives of our Chinese 
ministers.” A little imagination, when once our 
attention is called to it, enables us to see how we 
would not want to be possessed in this way by 
Christians of another land, however benevolent. 

The terms “mission assistants” and “missionary 
helpers” are already being dropped in the best 
usage. Where these older expressions are still 
used it shows that the center of gravity in thought 
is still in the temporary foreign missions and not 
in the permanent indigenous church. In the 
modern emphasis, it is the westerners who are the 
helpers. : 

“Native” is another word that has acquired un- 
fortunate associations. Some have used it ina 
derogatory, reproachful sense. The condemnable 
thing here is not the word, but the wrong attitude 
which has degraded the word. In some circles 
the word “nationals” is being substituted for 
“natives” and it may be best in some places where 
feelings have been hurt to make a new start. But 
as long as wrong attitudes and assumptions of 
white superiority continue, any new word will be 
_ dragged down in like manner. We must learn not 
to look down on another race or people. In the 
meantime we know that many Orientals are 
sensitive about this word. That is reason enough 
for avoiding it, or for using it with care and dis- 
crimination. When speaking of a_ particular 
country there is little need of it, since one can 
speak of Indians, Chinese, or Japanese, as the case — 


SENSE OF SUPERIORITY 21 


may be; or of the Indian Church, Chinese hymnol- 
ogy or Japanese workers. 


¥ 


It must-be plain that the sense of superiority 
which prevailed a century ago when modern mis- 
sions were young would now be ruinous. An 
attitude of mind could be successful then that 
could not be successful now. It would be folly 
for any modern missionary to neglect to adjust 
himself to the rapid development of racial and 
national consciousness which has been an out- 
standing characteristic of the past two decades. 
To be patronized by a foreigner is the last thing 
they will tolerate. It is recognized, therefore, that 
henceforth race pride is a disqualification for work 
abroad. Even a white skin may be more of a 
liability than an asset. It is not necessary to 
defend at ail costs our Occidental civilization. A 
fitting racial humility must mark those who go 
forth, and the warmth of their brotherhood must 
be so great as to weld races and to transcend 
national interests. 

Therefore those who select recruits for mis- 
sionary work want young men and women 
who recognize the fundamental value of each 
race, deplore the assumption of racial superior- 
ity on the part of whites, and realize that 
consciousness of superiority unfits for service 
to other peoples. Care, as never before, is being 
taken to send abroad only those men and women 
who can live among the people as brothers and 
_ sisters on the basis of simple unaffected friend- 


22 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


ship, and who do not come as benevolent superiors 
from above. Though one speak with the tongues 
of men and of angels in behalf of his living gospel 
and yet does not feel brother to those of different 
color and culture, his relationship will be tinged 
with patronage and his words will be heard as 
sounding brass and a clanging cymbal. 


CHAPTER II 
MUTUALITY IN GIVING AND RECEIVING 
I 


Our minds are able to go back in imagination 
to those days beyond the frontiers of human 
history when migrations from the original group 
began to separate and differentiate the people of 
the earth.. Humanity that started as one became 
geographically separated by deserts and mountain 
ranges and vast seas. The long, steady influence 
of climate and of geographic conditions picked 
out and accentuated variations in temperament 
and ability. Various social situations called forth 
different customs, different estimates of value, 
different philosophies of life. Variations in 
virility, geographic environment and historic cir- 
cumstance allowed some groups to forge ahead, 
and contributed to the backwardness of others. 

The most romantic days of history have at last 
brought these distant cousins into vital communi- 
cation. Thousands of years of separation under 
the most diverse conditions enable each people 
today to bring its special gift to the common 
store—the best of each for the good of all. Books, 
people, and the products of industry—like myriad 
flying shuttles—are busy weaving the web of a 

23 


24 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


re-unified humanity. In the interpenetration of 
the East and the West we see one of the most 
significant facts of modern days. We catch a 
glimpse of a fellowship richer and more fruitful 
than anything the world has yet seen, in which 
every function will be spiritualized because of the 
recognition that it‘is for the whole. 

Thus four kinds of relationships may be dis- 
tinguished in our contact with other countries: the 
blind ignorance of isolation and prejudice; the 
dawning recognition of values; a time of suspicion, 
fear and rivalry; and a final confidence in the 
certainty of helpful interchange. We are entering 
the fourth relationship where we acknowledge 
that we can learn from other people as well as 
they from us; that the ideal is mutual stimulation 
and cross-fertilization of culture, and that the 
better world will be achieved only when all work 
together for common goals in the light of common 
experience. It is a stage characterized by the 
recognition of interdependence and mutual 
obligation, when no member of the world team 
will trip the other up, but will pass to him the ball. 


II 


Under a system of mutuality the stronger and 
more self-sufficient a race or nation or church 
may be, the greater is its obligation to place its 
resources and experience at the others’ service. 
On the other hand, the stronger group must realize 
that it can probably learn much from a less 
conspicious or less developed unit. History shows 
that gifts do not always come from the most 


GIVING AND RECEIVING 25 


powerful nations, as is evident when we recall 
the significance of Palestine, Greece, Holland, or 
Switzerland. What we are approaching in as- 
piration is a living communion of one world group 
with another, where each is acting and reacting 
upon the other, consciously and unconsciously, 
with broadening, enriching, and most quickening 
results. Each nation will strive to stimulate the 
best life in others. But to do so it will see that it 
must correct its own life. For to attempt to do the 
best for others brings home the need of bettering 
one’s self. | 
Mutuality need not lead one to ignore the dif- 
ferences which actually exist In our human world. 
In fact, when we take into consideration the variety 
in mankind, it is necessary to revise some gen- 
eralizations, such as the Golden Rule. To do unto 
others as you would have others do to you is a 
very good guide as long as people are more or 
less alike. But when there are differences it may 
not be a sufficient guide for conduct simply to 
know what we would like most. The activity and 
organization congenial to us who have been 
brought up in a temperate climate may not at all 
be what is needed or desired by those of the torrid 
zone. We of the West might think that every one 
should be given tooth brushes because our civili- 
zation considers them of value. But in India they 
abhor these articles made of bristles, used time 
after time, and left to hang exposed. They much 
prefer their twig-made brushes, freshly plucked 
each morning. The intelligent application of the 
Golden Rule might lead us to install bathtubs for - 


26 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


another people. Yet this would not be kindness 
to individuals whose racial habit is to pour water 
over the body, but never to use this same water a 
second time as is inevitable in a tub. _ 

These crude illustrations suggest how mutuality 
on a world-wide scale involves the consideration 
of unlikeness. Not*what we would most like to be 
done to us, but what will call forth the richest 
personality in the other becomes the guide when 
action is on an inter-racial scale. With peoples of 
other cultures and other training we will try so to 
discharge our spiritual energy as to evoke the 
finest spiritual energy in them. This in turn will 
come back to our own enrichment—an eternal 
reciprocity among those who differ. We are 
working toward a world harmony in which 
barriers are repudiated while distinctions are 
affirmed. 

Many in the Orient are hungry to enter into this 
relationship of reciprocity. Rabindranath Tagore 
valued his Nobel Prize as a recognition of in- 
dividual merit, and still more, so he says, as an 
acknowledgement that the East is a collaborator 
with the West in contributing its riches to the 
common stock of civilization. To him it was 
symbolic of a joining of hands in comradeship of 
the two great hemispheres of the human world.! 
He pleads with the West in another place “to tell 
us [India| that the world has need of us; not 
where we are petty but where we can help with 
the force of our life to rouse the world in wisdom, 


*The Modern Review, September, 1921. 


GIVING AND RECEIVING 27 


love and work, in the expansion of insight, knowl- 
edge and mutuality.” ” 

This illustrates the truth that where you love 
another human being you need him. You are not 
merely eager (laudibly perhaps and _ disinter- 
estedly) to give him certain good things; but you 
need him as much as he needs you. An Indian 
Christian saint of great spiritual penetration, 
speaking to a friend about his relation with Euro- 
pean Christians, said, “You know, you make us 
feel that you want tc do good to us, but you don’t 
make us feel that you need us.” 

The conviction that mutuality in giving should 
be our normal expectation receives strong con- 
firmation in all the best friendships with foreign 
students in the West. Many colleges are learning 
the unique value of these nationals to their own 
student bodies, and are welcoming them for what 
they can give in forum, in cabinet, or discussion 
group. Their frankness in calling attention to the 
inconsistency and un-Christian practices and at- 
titudes on the part of Christians in the West has 
arrested the attention of many students and is 
influencing them to do all in their power to make 
real our Christian profession. Many who. began 
their relationship with these friends from across 
the seas as more or less condescending hosts have 
rapidly changed their attitude as they realized 
they were receiving, from those of other tempera- 
ments, upbringing, and culture, as much as they 
gave. 


*“Greater India,” p. 85. 


28 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


iit 


We get glimpses here and there of possible con- 
tributions to a common, cultural evolution. It is 
arresting to have one of Bertrand Russell’s in- 
telligence and insight say that it may easily be 
that there are things done in China better than in 
the West, and that, in the great interchange which 
will take place in the community of peoples, we 
will learn at various points from them. I re- 
member how Professor Sargent of Chicago 
University used to tell his pupils that out of five 
specified elements of art, China surpassed the 
West in four. The perusal of “Chinese Painters” 
by Raphael Petrucci, or of the Chinese poems 
translated by Mr. Waley will convince any one 
that we have much more to learn from them than 
mah jong. In their guild system, employer and 
employees were found in the same democratic 
group, and cooperation between these two groups 
had displaced competition, at the stage of de- 
velopment industry had then reached. In the 
Chinese passion for “saving face,” there is an 
element of respect for personality. At their best, 
her literati have a noticeable quietness, a poise, a 
peace. China has had its wars, but unlike the 
West, it can be said that down through the 
centuries the “best people” did not approve of 
them, the soldier being the lowest member of their 
social hierarchy. 

We are all indebted to Japan for manifold 
creations from her sense of beauty, and for high 
individual and national embodiments of politeness. 


GIVING AND RECEIVING 29 


In India we find patience, gentleness, and an age- 
long quest for oneness with reality; in Africa 
forbearance and cheerfulness; in Latin America 
quickness of perception, acuteness of analysis, 
and high flights of imagination. All over the 
Orient we see how people are devotedly fond of 
children, how all are wonderfully hospitable to 
strangers and guests; and how all (unless they 
have come too much in contact with the West) are 
beautifully courteous. Each land has certain ad- 
mirable qualities worthy of the unfeigned respect 
of the world. It is a realization of this that makes 
certain references to them as “those great mission- 
ary countries” sound a little provincial, as though 
being our parish abroad was their raison d’étre. 

Difference in gifts appeared explicitly in a con- 
versation two western professors of religion were 
having with a Buddhist monk. They had been 
questioning him long in their search for facts. 
Finally the monk asked them what work they had 
done in Buddhism. They said they had made a 
few translations. “No, I mean what work—what 
meditations have you done?” They had to ac- 
knowledge that they had done almost none. “Well, 
I advise you on getting up, before you get dressed, 
to take time to think back before you were born. 
Identify yourself with the Buddha which you are.” 
In our common search, surely the disciplined 
meditation of the East will helpfully supplement 
our scientific spirit. Surely India, whose rishis 
and sages have searched so faithfully for the 
ultimate gift of religion—the immediate knowl- 
edge of the imminent God—can contribute a 


30 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


capacity for prolonged aspiration which we will 
value. 

If we look beneath the surface we shall catch 
from one of China’s sages the ideal of “production 
without possession, activity without self-assertion, 
development without domination.” We will hear 
a Buddhist singer chant: 


Unto us hath our father given these two 
spiritual gifts. Of these the first is the virtue 
whereby we attain unto his kingdom, and_ the 
second is the virtue whereby having so attained 
we return into this world for the salvation of men. 

. And this, the second virtue, is called the Gift 
of Returning. 


Amid a labyrinth of seemingly futile imaginings 
we will trace three noble truths for which India 
has stood down through the centuries: That man’s 
soul is akin to, indeed, is part of, God; that the 
world is, in the last analysis, spiritual, not material; 
and that the universe is just. 

To be valued contributions, such truths do not 
need to be absolutely new. To find old truths 
embodied in another society or in leaders or saints 
of another race often rekindles appreciation of 
elements of our own religious heritage which we 
had almost overlooked. Each striking embodi- 
ment of beauty, truth, or love comes from the one 
Source and is needed by us all. 

In all this interchange of cultural and site 
experience the Christian who knows and lives his 
faith has a contribution for non-Christian lands 
far greater than any gift he can bring back from 
them. From almost every region consciously or 


GIVING AND RECEIVING 31 


unconsciously goes up the Old Testament cry, 
“Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!” The 
Christian has seen and experienced the pearl of 
great price. No missionary to other lands, no 
scholar of living faiths, has found a gem com- 
parable to this. It is because Jesus Christ is a 
uniquely precious and essential factor for the high- 
est, richest growth of every people that urgency 
surrounds the witness that Christians can give, in 
a way that urgency does not surround the sharing 
of any other gift of West or East. Each individual, 
each society, each nation, each race should have 
the opportunity of evolving in His presence. In 
communication with His creative Spirit individuals 
and whole peoples find a new future ever possible. 
We never were more sure than now that His is the 
greatest and the best influence that can be brought 
to bear upon the individual and corporate lives 
of men. Since this is so, mutuality’s inescapable 
demand on us is to make Him known. 


IV 


If there can be mutual profit from interchange 
between peoples of different faiths, still more 
specific should be the mutual gains when com- 
munities throughout the world that are Christian 
consciously stand shoulder to shoulder to form 
one body, 


With us to do and dare, 
With us the shame to share, 
With us the cross to bear 

For Christ our King. 


32 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


We are already beginning with them a common 
aspiration for life—abundant, resourceful, pur- 
pose-forming, end-attaining, world-transforming 
life. The young and struggling churches of Africa, 
South America and the East stand today in special 
need of certain kinds of help which we can give 
them. But these same churches will be helping 
us if we are willing to be receptive. For one thing 
our Christian heritage of truth and life ideals is 
being challenged and re-studied from differing 
racial points of view so that, unless we are wedded 
to a static faith, the younger communions abroad 
should help us to pick out what is gold, tried and 
purified. We should be thankful that the fresher 
and less conditioned viewpoint of these young 
churches may help us to sweep away whatever of 
chaff has clung to our western church. 

We face certain problems of theological science: 
What is it that differentiates Christianity from all 
other religions; what gives it its convicting and 
converting power over the men whom it draws 
under its spell? Surely, those who have known 
vital religions in other forms and have seen 
Christianity meeting faiths of great antiquity will 
be able to throw light on such problems. It may 
easily be that the storm center of Christian con- 
troversy will pass from the West to Oriental sem- 
inaries where will be wrought out the adjustment 
of Christian thought to the ancient heritage of 
non-Christian cultures. In giving due weight to 
their sense of valucs in such controversies we 
ought to come to a better perspective in our own 
thought and see fundamentals in a truer light. We 


GIVING AND RECEIVING 33 


can rejoice over the challenge they will in- 
creasingly bring to the Church of the West regard- 
ing aspects of thought and institutional life that 
from their angle of vision seem clearly divisive, 
unwholesome or purely’ sectional. Mother 
Churches may well listen, at least, to the fresh 
experience of daughters across the seas. 

Already we are getting rich foretastes of in- 
ternational Christian fellowship. For example, 
in 1923, at Oxford, men and women came together 
for the International Missionary Council from 
India and China, from Western and Northern 
Europe, and from North and South America. Here 
was a body, representing a wide range of nations 
and races, including many types of experience, 
and manifesting great variety in outlook; and yet 
knit together because of fellowship in a great 
objective. For ten days they met together in dis- 
cussion and prayer over questions so inescapable, 
so challenging, so vast, as to demand nothing less 
than corporate faith and action. During periods 
of discussion, devotion and social relaxation many 
felt exhilarated in experiencing the rich and varied 
contributions made by a group so constituted. 

Not less was this true in the World’s Christian 
Student Federation at its eleventh conference in 
Peking in 1922. Here were Koreans, Japanese, 
Czecho-Slovakians, Dutch, and Scandinavians, 
Italians, Greeks, Negroes, Indians, British, and 
Americans. Chinese had the largest hand in the 
organization. Indians came with a new vision of 
Christ gained from the vindication of spiritual 
force as seen in their national leader, Mahatma 


34 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


Gandhi. Their faith in God stood out, for when 
the conference was in the depths of argument and 
discussion—overburdened by their responsibility 
for reconstructing the world—it was the Indians 
who gently but firmly reminded the delegates that 
God’s hand was at the helm. Some Orientals 
thought that they might be able to take certain 
practical things better from the Chinese than from 
the Westerners; some Chinese thought that they 
might get the mystical elements in religion better 
from Christian India than from Britain or 
America. More than one delegate caught the con- 
sciousness that his nation had something that is 
characteristic, and is good, and which other peoples 
need. As it became plain that no widespread 
advance could be made until Christians in all 
lands joined in the common fight against wrong, 
all saw that the non-Christian elements in the West 
need the Christian East no less than the non- 
Christian elements in the East need the Christian 
West. Only together will the Kingdom of God 
be built. 

In the great codperative struggle for a better 
world, that will characterize the Christian fellow- 
ship of the future, we may find the various 
national Churches memorializing one another on 
specific points where action is deemed advisable. 
For example, when the petitions requesting the 
American and the British authorities to prevent 
foreign liquor interests from pressing their activi- 
ties on China were being circulated, it was sug- 
gested that it would be a splendid thing if the 
Chinese Church could appeal direct to the Church 


GIVING AND RECEIVING 30 


in America in order that its constituency might 
bring pressure to bear on the authorities in this 
matter of combating liquor and vice in China. 

At the instance of a group of Chinese Christians, 
the National Christian Council of China wrote to 
the Federal Council of Churches in the United 
States concerning the playing of the Chinese game 
of mah jong in the West. ‘They said that the 
introduction of this game into the social life of 
England and America was having a weakening 
effect upon the moral stamina of Chinese 
Christians, since mah jong and gambling are 
always associated in China. 

Still another example is found in the action of 
the executive committee of the National Christian 
Council of Japan in connection with the United 
States Immigration Act of 1924. Feeling that in- 
ternational amenities had not been duly con- 
sidered, that adequate opportunity for united 
conference had been denied, and that the act as 
passed was not in accord with the spirit of Chris- 
tianity, this Council expressed to the Federal 
Council of Churches in America its desire “to 
cooperate with the Christians in the United States 
with a view to solving satisfactorily this difficult 
racial question in the spirit essential to Christian- 
ity.” Evidently we are just at the beginning of a 
period of such interchange of judgments on an 
international scale. 

We see the possibility of mutual contribution in 
still another form, in the visit to England of 
Theophilus Subrahmanyam. ‘The story of his 
leaving family and college to find God strangely 


36 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


moved many hearts. “You can never understand 
how much my soul thirsted for God, in those days,” 
he told them. So, after the custom of his people, 
he left all and journeyed to the far-distant hills, 
lived as a hermit, meditated, fasted, journeyed to 
Benares and then to the Himalayas, in the hope of 
finding God. At last he found Him; not in the 
faith of his fathers, but unexpectedly, in Christ 
Jesus. Following Christ cost him dear. It meant 
yet another act of renunciation and self-sacrifice 
—hbreaking caste, counting ioss the things that 
aforetime had been gain to him, breaking away 
from his family and his beloved mother. Only 
those who know India can understand what all 
this means to a Brahman. It involves bitter re- 
proaches and hatred, and even scrious personal 
violence. As the people of England listened to 
Subrahmanyam’s story, Christ's words about 
taking up the Cross came to them with new mean- 
ing. Subrahmanyam’s visit became a blessing to 
thousands. This is but a single instance. Those, 
however, who care to listen may hear story after 
story of Christians in other lands, triumphing 
gloriously over depressing circumstances and 
wrong conditions, over sin and opposition, over 
pessimism and despair. Seeing them, will we not 
be spurred on to catch their secret—the secret of 
Christ within as the power for daily life? 

When the missionary enterprise has evolved 
into something different from just what we now 
understand it to be, and when Japan and China 
and all other lands are predominantly Christian,. 
there will undoubtedly be an interchange of great 





GIVING AND RECEIVING 37 


spiritual messengers. Already Japan has given 
for a winter to India her Dr. Harada and Dr. 
Motoda for a notable series of addresses. Already 
China has given up one of its leaders, to become 
the first Oriental secretary of the Worlds Chris- 
tian Student Federation, who is able to say things 
to eastern countries which no western leader 
could fitly voice, and who, with his fluent English, 
gracious manner, and keen religious life, shares 
with the West those riches of God in Christ Jesus 
which have been revealed to the men and women 
of the East. Already many Christians of the West 
are prepared to welcome a time of receiving as 
well as of giving. On the other hand, just as we 
call a Jowett or a Kelman to America, so in the 
future Japan may invite some _ outstanding 
American to one of her pulpits, not as a mission- 
ary but as a preacher. One of the ablest and most 
outspoken Christian Indians* says that the time 
will never come when India can do without the 
western Christian. He has a personality, as has 
his wife, and their Christian home has an influence 
which India cannot spare. The mutual help and 
exchange already begun is sure to grow. 

Each land may produce its Paul, its Origen, its 
Augustine, who will give to his own people a con- 
vincing apologetic of the Gospel, and to the Church 
universal another great chapter of Christian in- 
terpretation. Just as now many of our seminaries 
rejoice in the national as well as the personal con- 
tribution made by British scholars on their staffs, 


* Report of the Deputation io India, London Missionary 
Society, 1922-3, p. 166. 


38 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


so in the future seminaries may well have on their 
faculties an Indian or a Japanese—if we judge 
our students need to know other cultures and the 
way Christianity is interpreted by their best spirits. 
Western universities and theological schools will 
have courses on the history of Christianity in other 
lands, with special emphasis upon the contribution 
each has made to the fuller understanding of 
Christianity. Pulpits and seminaries in each land 
will increasingly draw upon an _ international 
supply. 

We do not see, nor wish to see, a time, however 
far through the distant future, when there will not 
be an international fellowship of interchange. Any 
group anywhere which feels it has discovered a 
new solution, a fresh interpretation, a satisfying 
way of life which others do not have, should send 
forth witnesses. Every one recognizes that new 
devices, inventions and discoveries may be ad- 
vertised on a world scale, and agents are “sent 
forth’—that is, commercial missionaries are sent 
forth to introduce them. .Surely a sharing of one’s 
best on the higher cultural and spiritual levels 
without the acquisitive motive is not less proper. 
There need be nothing that is patronizing in send- 
ing nor humiliating in receiving on an international 
scale any more than on a personal scale at 
Christmas. It is presence of mutuality that re- 
moves the sting. In this sense of international 
exchange let us hope there will never be an end 
to “missions.” The difference will be that China 
and Africa will be sending and calling as well as 
merely receiving; and we of the West will be 


GIVING AND RECEIVING 39 


calling and receiving as well as merely sending. 
It will be a triple activity. 

The larger and older churches of the West would 
be shirking their duty if they did not contribute 
largely to the cost of the cultural and spiritual 
interchange anticipated here. For many decades 
the peoples of the Orient and of Africa may not 
be able to finance their spiritual representatives 
to us. Just this situation exists between England 
and America today in connection with the inter- 
change of pastors which is being encouraged. 
American preachers on larger salaries can live in 
comfort in England; but English clergy cannot 
afford to accept exchange pulpits and meet higher 
costs in America. Just as America can without 
condescension overcome this financial inequality, 
so fer years the West will have to take a large 
share in the financing of the world’s spiritual 
interchange. 

As a matter of fact, it is very hard to rise above 
the isolations caused by race and oceans, and 
feel that we are parts of one world family. Almost 
inevitably, in our thinking about the missionary 
enterprise, we have the consciousness of doing for 
another—a foreign—people. For a time in this 
enterprise we take up China’s or Africa’s load— 
but the task really belongs to them, we say. We 
set up an artificial limit—the establishment of a 
self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating 
Church—beyond which we do not think of our- 
selves as giving. The fecling of “otherness” is 
prominent in all this work. We look forward to 
the “euthanasia of the mission” with a sense of 


40 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


relief, for, with the start we shall have given them, 
mission lands can then shift for themselves. 

But is not all this way of thinking a sign that 
we are still immature in world citizenship? Does 
it not mean that oceans and race still loom so 
large as to keep us from feeling the larger unity? 
Our relation through Christ to all mankind has 
not become the dominating relationship. We do 
not talk that way about a portion of our own 
country. We do not set a Kmit of time beyond 
which money shall not go from parts wealthier to 
the colleges and institutions of poorer sections. 
When at last we humans come to feel that we form 
one world family, will we not whole-heartedly 
adopt the principle that wherever need is, there 
resources in life and money should be released? 
For generations to come the white races may have 
economic power. Dare they hold their resources 
within the boundaries of their own national lives, 
as though our “we feeling” had not begun—falter- 
ingly, we acknowledge—to include all on our 
earth? The spirit of mutuality in a rapidly shrink- 
ing world sees no time when we can withdraw to 
enjoy by ourselves our material surplus. As long 
as is necessary we must cooperate in bringing the 
spirit and principles of Christ to bear upon all 
human life. 

Hence, until needs cease and as long as in- 
dividuals and peoples develop characteristic gifts, 
the spirit of missions will have a place. Hence 
on the economic side also, as long as needs exist, 
missions will not cease. 


GIVING AND RECEIVING Al 


Vv 


The adoption of this ideal of mutuality is affect- 
ing mission practice. Increasingly, missionaries 
are alert to see what they can bring back as well 
as what they can take. Both overseas and on 
furlough many a missionary thinks of his task as 
being that of an interpreter. In the past he has 
been an interpreter of the West; more and more 
he is becoming an interpreter to the West. Alert 
students in our colleges are asking missionaries 
what the distinctive contributions of Occident to 
Orient are, and what, on the other hand, are the 
distinctive contributions of East to West. They 
are expecting their representatives abroad to make 
contacts with the spiritually minded of other 
faiths. There is always the danger that zealous 
advocates may be so intent on molding another’s 
life and thought that they will be oblivious to 
ideas and institutions differing from their own. 
But in these days one can find many an earnest 
propagandist of Christianity who shows that he 
has been willing to learn. 

No one who has not made a start in cultural 
appreciation should think of going to the more 
advanced parts of the Orient. In particular, a 
candidate is expected to make a beginning in a 
special study of the contribution to culture and 
progress which his adopted country has made. 
Without losing his own peculiar cultural or 
national heritage while abroad, he looks forward 
to identifying. himself completely with another 
-people—than which there are few tasks more dif- 


42 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


ficult, or more joyful. He is told that the only 
. gift he has to give or that they eventually are 
prepared to accept is that of reciprocal friend- 
ship on equal terms. He gladly recognizes, as one 
element in Christ-likeness, that spirit which sees 
the gifts and graces of others and is ready to learn 
from them. In like*manner forward-looking mis- 
sionary training centers more and more conceive 
their task, not simply as sending prepared men 
forth, but as mediating the world’s best to folks at 
home. 

What, then, from the standpoint of this chapter 
is the vision of the future, for the realization of 
which today’s youth are asked to give them- 
selves? We see peoples bringing their unique 
contribution to the common store. They are 
earnestly desiring the fuller understanding of the 
purpose and character of God that will come when 
each race has brought to the common treasury its 
interpretation as colored by its peculiar heritage 
and temperament. Into the city of God has come 
“the honor and the glory of the nations.” There 
is a full and generous appreciation on the part of 
each of what the others have apprehended of 
truth. Among them is found a positive and con- 
structive effort to share the springs of spiritual 
power. All are characterized by mutuality—that 
attitude of mind in which passionate affection for, 
and devotion to, the values associated with one’s 
own group are combined with a sympathetic re- 
ceptivity to values in each other group. Each is 
willing to say (adapting an old proverb) that every 
nation is our master in something. In this vision 


GIVING AND RECEIVING 43 


the world has become a family, marked by mutual 
helpfulness and service in which differences make 
possible mutual enrichment—a_ fellowship in 
which not only the estranging differences of race 
are completely transcended, but in which the 
supplementing and fertilizing contributions of 
each are aggressively sought. Nay more—when 
western ideas threaten to overwhelm these con- 
tributions, the spirit of mutuality in the Christian 
movement will set itself with all firmness against 
such destruction. It seeks to help another people 
to achieve the full development of their worthful 
ideas and values. 

Each people, in fact, will have a fourfold 
struggle in love. First a discriminating effort to 
see and to appreciate the admirable qualities that 
should endure in other peoples (such as_ the 
Chinese spirit of tolerance, or their recognition of 
a moral order pervading the universe; the 
Japanese Buddhist’s genius for contemplation; or 
the permeation of life with the God-consciousness 
that marks India’s age-old quest for the divine). 
Second, a discriminating effort to detect for each 
other land those modes of thought and those 
elements in social and national life which have 
become hindrances io its progress and which 
therefore it should modify (such as the tendency 
to look only backward in reverence for the dead 
and not forward, also, in the interests of the living 
and yet unborn; the restriction of social interest 
and concern to the smaller units of family and 
clan; or the prevalence among a people of wide- 


44 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


spread superstition). Third, an effort to detect 
any elements in one’s own culture that are worthy 
' of transplanting (such as, for the West, the 
scientific spirit and method, the dynamic and 
technique of social betterment; the physical 
and moral values of play and wholesome 
recreation; the application of Christian principles 
to industrial and commercial life, and all the 
priceless heritages in life and influence that derive 
from Jesus Christ). Lastly, an unrelenting 
effort to detect those elements in one’s civiliza- 
tion that would harm another people (such 
as white racial arrogance; the militaristic spirit; 
sectarian ecclesiasticism; immodesty in dress; ex- 
travagance and luxury; or an industrial system 
based on ruthless competition). Discrimination 
of this fourfold character is needed as we enter 
the deeper fellowship of peoples. 

This is not a new ideal, for the conception of 
mutuality in giving and receiving finds its classic 
embodiment in I Corinthians, 12, where Paul uses 
the analogy of the human body which is one even 
though it has many members, and where all the 
members of the body form a single organism in 
spite of their number. 


For the body is not one member, but many. If 
the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I 
am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the 
body. And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the 
eye, [am not of the body; it is not therefore not of 
the body. If the whole body were an eye, where 
were the hearing? If the whole were hearing where 
were the smelling? But now hath God set the 


GIVING AND RECEIVING 45 


members each one of them in the body, even as 
it pleased him. And if they were all one member, 
where were the body? But now they are many 
members, but one body. And the eye cannot say 
to the hand, I have no need of thee: or again the 
head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, 
much rather, those members of the body which 
seem to be more feeble are necessary: and those 
parts of the body, which we think to be less honor- 
able, upon these we bestow more abundant honor; 
and our uncomely parts have more abundant 
comeliness; ... And whether one member suf- 
fereth, all the members suffer with it; or one 
member is honored, all the members rejoice 
with it. 

This spiritual world fellowship—the Church 
that is to be—is an organism whose health and 
strength depend upon the drawing of vitality from 
the life of all the rest by each member, and whose 
weaker and less mature parts not only share the 
gains of the more virile and mature, but are grate- 
fully credited with functions without which the 
whole would be the poorer. In such a fellowship 
there is a plurality of cultures each contributing its 
distinctive flavor but a unity of family feeling 
through mutual appreciation and burden bearing. 

The world sorely needs to realize this organic 
conception of a world society, where independence 
gives way to interdependence, and where com- 
petition is superseded by cooperation. Fully to 
realize this co-relationship as members one of an- 
other constitutes a great part of growth in 
spirituality. 

Are there not possibilities of progressive mutual 


eran UY, WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


growth in this vision that can draw forth our 
utmost devotion? And is not the creation of this 
world-wide comradeship a worthy objective for 
every intelligent and religious being? 


CHAPTER II 
THE WEST AS PART OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN WORLD 
I 


Ir has long been the custom, when making mis- 
sionary maps, to paint the sending countries white 
and the receiving countries black. In recent years, 
however, we have been startled into the realization 
that the West is part of the non-Christian world, 
and that there is no sharp division into lands that 
are white and those that are black—unless, indeed, 
the West is of a deeper black because it has had 
access to Christ so long. 

We have to acknowledge that our western valu- 
ations are largely un-Christian. In current thought 
success is measured in terms of money, property, 
and material power. The commercial motive 
dominates the values in recreation and play, tend- 
ing to lower them to the level of passion and 
satiation of the senses. Scientific invention and 
discoveries are often used as a means of selfish 
gain. The bitterness of class struggles proves that 
the Spirit has not been permitted to yield the 
fruits of love, joy, peace. The glaring contrasts 
of luxury and squalor are quite incompatible with 
the teachings and spirit of the Carpenter of 

Nazareth. Western Christendom shows itself 
47 


48 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


most apostate in the sphere of international re- 
lations, where governments are managed to but- 
~ tress selfish national privilege and the material 
power of a special few. After fifteen hundred 
years or so of Christianity one would have 
supposed that the nations of the West would at 
least be able to live in decent friendliness with one 
another. But we find even yet it is only a daring 
minority among Christians who are willing to out- 
law war as a thoroughly repudiated method of 
settling disputes between nations. 

The West must take its place as part of the 
non-Christian world even on the basis of ignorance 
of Christianity. The great majority of our popula- 
tion do not understand our faith. In Britain the 
Army and Religion Inquiry showed how little 
grasp of formal Christian teaching great masses 
of Great Britain’s population have. Similar re- 
sults came from a study of American troops. This 
condition is not confined to any one class. The 
house master of an English public school recently 
stated that a great number of boys came to the 
school even from so-called Christian homes with 
little or no knowledge of the Bible or of the 
Christian religion. The head of one of our fore- 
most missionary training centers laments the 
“rawness” with which candidates come up for 
preparation. In a national conference of church 
leaders in missions the statement went un- 
challenged that not 20 per cent of church members 
are intelligently interested in the world-wide King- 
dom, and a Bishop seriously suggested that not 


THE WEST AS PART OF THE WORLD 49 


even one member in five of the Church is a con- 
verted person. 

We find an experienced missionary lecturer ac- 
knowledging to his Indian audience that “except 
in individual lives here and there, the meaning of 
the incarnation of Christ has hardly been com- 
prehended in the West, much less lived up to.” 
The head of one of the great missions in India 
recently gave it as his judgment that America 
needs the gospel of Christ as much as does India; 
that our ideals are as much athwart the mind of 
Christ as are those of the simple villagers of 
Hindustan. Over and over again, when meeting 
the informed criticisms of non-Christian students 
abroad, I have had to acknowledge that America 
is not yet Christian; it is only trying to become 
Christian. Missionaries from the great port cities 
and from all parts of Africa say that it is just 
where there has been most contact with the West 
that success is least. The most striking results 
have come where work has been carried on 
apart from European and American traders and 
settlers. 

Such disconnected, yet arresting, judgments 
reveal how far we have yet to go before we are 
justified in coloring our western countries any- 
thing but a dark gray, and they help us to see the 
admonition in G. K. Chesterton’s lines: 

Lord, we that snatch the swords of flame: 

Lord, we that cry about thy car, 


We, too, are weak with pride and shame, 
We, too, are as our foeman are. 


o0 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


Yea, we are mad as they are mad: 

Yea, we are blind as they are blind: 
Yea, we are very sick and sad 

Who bring good news to all mankind. 


Lord, when we cry Thee far and near 
And thunder through all lands unknown 
The gospel into every ear, 
Lord, let us not forget our own. 


IE 


A new factor in the situation is that, as a result 
of the great modern student migrations, intelligent 
representatives of other peoples are beholding at 
first hand our shame. The churches of the United 
States and Canada altogether send only about 
17,000 representatives abroad. However, 7,494 
students from other nations voluntarily come to 
us. China alone is sending 1,491 students to us. 
Japan sends 685; the Philippines, 649; Mexico, 232; 
India, 218. Authoritative investigations’ have 


shown that our people are falling far below 


their duty and privilege with reference to 
these guests who have taken the initiative in 
coming to us. Much adverse discrimination is 
endured by these students, not only in ordinary 
social relations, but in obtaining rooms, board. 
and public service. There is a vast amount of 
loneliness among them. Most of them do not have 
adequate contact with good friends and good 
homes. Too often they batile alone with the perils 
of social and spiritual solitude. From the stand- 


*By the Commission on Foreign Students in America, 
1923-4. 


ae, 


THE WEST AS PART OF THE WORLD 51 


point of foreign missions the significant fact is 
that the presence, of these students among us 
results in a net loss to the Christian movement. 
We are told? that those who lose their effective 
Christian faith are in excess of converts to Chris- 
tianity. The average student is farther from the 
conscious acceptance and practice of the principles 
of Jesus when he leaves our shores than when he 
arrived. Most students coming from abroad do 
not relate themselves to Christian work in any 
active manner after their return; and not infre- 
quently this is true of those who came to America 
to prepare for Christian callings. Foreign students 
in our midst do not hesitate to jar us out of self- 
complacency by pointing cut our pride of race 
and national arrogance; our passion for money, 
for power, for pleasure; our materialism; our 
consciousness of color. No intelligent Oricntal 
will refuse to acknowledge that there are vices in 
his part of the world; but he will insist that they 
can generally be matched by those of the Occident 
in what is often a more strident and aggressive 
form. Many of them come to the West predisposed 
to find a Christian civilization here. They make 
no secret of their disappointment. 

Listen to these recent comments by forcign 
students in America. One who had been here 
seven months remarked: “Christianity no doubt is 
good, but it is not easy to find a Christian. Of 
what use is it to boast of one’s religion if religious 
ideals are not embodied in the lives of the majority 


_* By the Committee on Friendly Relations among For- 
eign Students. 


52 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


of its followers?” Another who had been in a 
state college for fifteen months said: “I know only 
two or three men here whom I would call Chris- 
tians.” A Chinese student summed up our land as 
follows: “A Christian country full of pagans— 
out-and-out heathen.” A Hindu, three years resi- 
dent in America, said that “here and there is an 
occasional flicker of the true Christian spirit, but 
America’s young people are mostly un-Christian.” 

“It is a grave mistake,” rather bluntly warned 
another, “to disguise from yourselves the fact that 
the educated class of India sees that Christianity 
is made to cover a multitude of sins. We think 
that Christianity of to-day has only produced con- 
querors and enslavers of mankind. Unless the 
spirit of Christendom shall change from greed to 
service, unless the hearts and hands of Christian 
empires are clean, mission work of any kind is 
going to be a philanthropy wasted, because forced 
on a resentful people.” “Asia and Africa have 
found,” says another, “that you have used the 
Bible as it suited your convenience.” Still another 
foreigner pierces right home when he says: “If you 
wre at all like the Sermon on the Mount, or even 
like the prophetic ideals of Israel, Asia would fall 
down before your God.” 

A student from China urges that American 
Christians should make their country more 
Christian in its racial and industrial life, so that 
it shall be impossible for the fourteen hundred 
Chinese students who are studying in America 
every year to avoid catching the spirit of Jesus 
Christ. If such a transformation could take place, 


THE WEST AS PART OF THE WORLD 53 


so that there could be a stream of Christian stu- 
dents going back to China, what an effective con- 
tribution it would be! 

A keen Liberian graduate from one of our 
Universities had inquired why so few of American 
students are Christians. “Not Christian? What 
do you mean?” he was asked. “Over 85 per cent 
of the students of this college are members of 
Christian churches.” “But I mean real Christians. 
After four years among them—-and they are the 
finest fellows ever—I find so many who do not 
wholly earn their credits; so many who have the 
wrong attitude toward girls, so many who have no 
spirit of love or of service in their hearts, that I 
am forced to believe that there are not many actual 
Christians.” “How many would you say?” “That's 
difficult, of course; but I should say not much 
over 5 per cent are truly Christians!” Five per 
cent! And 85 per cent church members! In check- 
ing up with other students and with members of 
the faculty it was found that some accepted the 
figure given. None placed it over 12 per cent. 

Word of these conditions is not confined to 
America; Bishop Tucker says that Japanese say 
to him over and over again: | 

We read in our newspapers that in your colleges 
and universities in America, more than 50 per cent. 
of your professors are not Christian. We read 
the reports which come to us with regard to your 
Christian life, and, somehow, they do not convince 
us that Christianity is the dominating moral force 


in the lives of the people who call themselves 
Christians. 


o4. WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


In his book the “Scourge of Christianity,” Paul 
Richards tells how the West practices Christianity 
- in Asia. His words have been eagerly heard and 
quoted by Asiatics, who find in the theme the very 
essence of their own feeling for the mockery of 
white religions. Some passages, said to be most 
quoted in Indian papers, seem to be saying to us 
“the name of God is blasphemed among the 
Gentiles because of you”: 


Christians worship one son of Asia ...ata 
great cost to the others. 

Europe finds it natural to take one man of Asia 
as Master, and all his brothers as slaves. 

Christians think that since one Asiatic alone is 
the Son of God, the rest can fairly be treated as 
sons of the Devil. 

The Christianity of Christ died when Asia ceased 
to teach it. 

When Christ comes again He will have to give 
up being an Asiatic and a carpenter if He wishes 
to be admitted into the Christian countries of 
America and Australia. 

The Christ, if He comes, will not be of the white 
race; the colored peoples could not put their faith 
in Him. 

If Christ has not changed His ideas, Christians 
will have, when He returns, te change their habits. 


The reactions of foreign students in our midst, 
as indicated in this section, constitute a severe 
condemnation of Christianity in America, but they 
also show that we have failed to lay hold of a 
fresh and new way of touching other lands. The 
standardized Christian approach has been through 
our missionary societies. Special organizations, 
such as the Committee on Friendly Relations with 


THE WEST AS PART OF THE WORLD 55 


Foreign Students, the International House, and 
various Cosmopolitan clubs, have nobly tried to 
meet this problem. But in general we have had 
too much inertia and too little imagination to per- 
mit us to adjust ourselves quickly to this new 
opportunity in our own land of bringing the impact 
of Christian teaching and life to bear upon this 
great body of potential leaders. One big element 
in the reconstruction of our thought with reference 
to missions will be to catch the right perspective 
with reference to this opportunity. 


Ii 


Our own students are beginning to realize the 
implications of this inclusion of the West in the 
non-Christian world. Even candidates for foreign 
service ask whether it is not pharisaic for so-called 
Christian nations to send forth missionaries. They 
are confused about the sanctions under which we 
carry on missions, in view of the failures of western 
civilization. Such questions as the following are 
handed in: 


Does a church, that is willing to tolerate a state 
of things in which it can be authoritatively stated 
that 10 per cent of the workers of the United 
States have been out of work all the time, possess 
the moral passion that can evangelize the world? 

How can we justify ourselves in bringing Christ 
to the needy of the foreign field and then stand 
around with “hands down” when western in- 
dustries come along and upset all Christ’s 
principles in their business relations with these 

peoples? 


36 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS © 


Very likely most of the money for missions 
comes from those who are doing their utmost to 
improve industrial conditions, but a young 
socially-minded missionary on furlough is sure to 
be restless if he finds out from social workers that 
the person who gave $800 toward his traveling 
expenses is tolerating unwholesome working 
conditions in connection with his factory. 

There was a time when at missionary confer- 
ences the contrast of the bright side of Christianity 
with the seamy side of the non-Christian religions 
would have gone unchallenged. “In Darkest 
Africa” was a book title typical of the nineteenth 
century. It is significant, however, that at the last 
Quadrennial Student Volunteer Convention there 
was more outspoken criticism of western civiliza- 
tion and its economic and political shortcomings 
than of Africa and the Orient. Implicit or explicit 
in almost every utterance was the realization that 
the world is a unity in respect to the need for 
spiritual uplift, moral guidance, and Christian 
fellowship. There, at least, Asiatic students could 
mingle with Americans and feel that no holier- 
than-thou attitude was present, for the heathen- 
dom of America and Europe was more emphasized 
than that of Asia and Africa. 

Unquestionably, there are Christian elements 
in western civilization. Workmen’s compensa- 
tion laws, safety zones, a long list of social solu- 
tions betoken an increasingly Christian valuation 
placed on human life. Manifold public and private 
philanthropic institutions have embodied some- 
thing of the spirit of Christian service. Many a 


THE WEST AS PART OF THE WORLD 57 


social and political struggle shows that some at 
least acknowledge the supremacy of moral values. 
We acknowledge that “non-Christian” is a pretty 
severe adjective, and we do not in this chapter 
wish to encourage any morbid self-condemnation 
belittling either the sincerity or the solid achieve- 
ments of Christian initiative in the West. We are 
simply pointing out that these unquestionably 
Christian elements are inextricably entangled with 
manifold pagan elements. Indelibly has this sad 
fact been printed on the minds of the younger 
generation—those who have faced the fateful, 
tragic years since 1914 and even 1919. Their con- 
ception, also, of what it means to be a Christian is 
being vastly deepened and enriched so that in 
comparison with the ideal they feel one with an 
un-Christian world. They can but strike their 
breasts and acknowledge that we too are sinful 
men. 

Hence in the minds of many, “the evangelization 
of the world” no longer has exclusive reference 
to other peoples. They sadly acknowledge that 
the West is only relatively Christian inasmuch as 
large areas of its life and of its international rela- 
tions are not yet fundamentally affected by the 
principles of Christ. All classification that self- 
complacently puts the anti-Christian entirely out- 
side so-called Christendom must be given up. 


IV 


Several results follow at once from the realiza- 
tion that the West is part of the non-Christian 
world. It has made necessary a sharp distinction 


58 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


between western civilization and Christianity. 
There have been missionaries who have en- 
‘couraged the spread of western imperialism on 
the ground that the control of non-Christian lands 
by so-called Christian governments would facili- 
tate the introduction of the West’s supposedly 
superior moral and spiritual standards. It is ac- 
knowledged that both before and since the war 
missions have been used to advance commercial 
and political interests* In the past hosts of 
westerners have assumed that their own civiliza- 
tion was good, and have taken it for granted that 
it should be passed on to others. Many have 
found it as natural to introduce democracy and 
rocking chairs, the American type of college and 
sewing machines, collars, and railways, as to lead 
people to be friends with Jesus Christ. Thus in 
the minds of many there has been a loose identi- 
fication of Christianity and the civilization of so- 
called Christendom. Christianity was presented 
as the source and basis of Occidental civilization, 
so that whenever the tide of occidentalization 
swept over a country (as over Japan in the eighties, 
or over China and Korea during the second decade 
of this century) the spread of Christianity went 
forward with leaps and bounds. This was an 
effective method of propaganda among uncritical 
peoples as long as they were welcoming things 
western, but a boomerang as soon as the prestige 
of western civilization has passed away. As long 
as Christianity is confused with western civiliza- 
tion and Americanism, enthusiastic nationals will 
* International Review of Missions, vol. 11, p. 149. 


THE WEST AS PART OF THE WORLD 59 


inevitably fear missions, for the combination does 
imperil much that they prize in their civiliza- 
tions. One of India’s greatest statesmen once 
said, “Your Jesus is hopelessly handicapped by His 
connection with the West.” 

Every modern missionary, therefore, is doing 
his best to let Christianity stand out by itself with- 
out the immense handicap of association with 
western civilization. To any one who urges that 
a case can be made out with certainty for the 
moral and spiritual superiority of western life, we 
would say, let us not set up East against West, let 
us frankly acknowledge our failure to put in 
practice the principles of Jesus so that we cannot 
yet be called a Christian nation. Rather let us 
emphasize the truth that wherever (in China, in 
India, or in the West) Christ’s way has been tried 
transformations in human nature and in the 
structure of society have followed which make it 
stand out as the hope of the human race. It is 
because we profoundly believe this truth and not 
because of the superiority of western civilization 
that missions command our loyalty. 

In fact a still more incisive distinction has to be 
made, and that is between Christ and Christianity. 
The term Christian has been associated with so 
much that repels the Near East, Africa, and the 
Orient, that in many places the influence of Jesus 
seems handicapped by being linked up with 
“Christianity.” In the bitterest of non-Christian 
centers, if you say your object in being there is to 
help men live like Jesus did, they will heartily 
approve. If you say you are there as part of an 


60 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


effort “to make the world Christian,” they will 
resent it to the core. “Christian” to the Muham- 
-madans brings up the Crusades; to the Jews, bitter 
persecutions; to the Chinese, opium, western 
aggression, and the attempted partitioning of 
their country. To many an Indian “making the 
world Christian” is equivalent to British imperial- 
ism. To most Hindus every white man is a Chris- 
tian—the moral element is not prominent. In the 
minds of many non-Christians to Christianize a 
land is more to Anglo-Saxonize or Americanize it 
than to make the way of Jesus prevalent there. In 
many places it would not be wise to advocate “the 
Christian way of life,” for this brings up to mind 
the imperfect practice of the West rather than the 
following of Christ himself. Christianity, as they 
see the system, is not combating capitalism and 
militarism. The financial support of Christian 
organizations and of many missionaries is closely 
connected with an exploitive system and tolera- 
tion of the spirit of western militant nationalism. 
In many areas the coming of Christianity has been 
mixed up in their minds with the coming of the 
trader and encroachments of an alien government. — 
Individual missionaries have at times denounced 
some particular act, but few missionary societies 
have defined their position with reference to ex- 
ploitive capitalistic industry and imperialistic 
aggressive governments. The usual policy is one 
of benevolent neutrality. 

A secretary of the World’s Student Christian 
Federation found the following concepts associated 
with Christianity in the minds of non-Christian 


THE WEST AS PART OF THE WORLD 61 


students: being against the Jews; the system by 
which the rich oppress the poor; going to church 
on Sunday and doing what one pleases for the 
rest of the week; a fabric of worn-out dogmas 
which have nothing to do with daily life. Jesus 
unquestionably is associated with the Sermon on 
the Mount, but Christianity as practiced does not 
exemplify to the non-Christian such injunctions 
as: Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth; 
a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of 
Heaven; therefore I say unto you take no thought 
for your life what ye shall eat, or what ye shall 
drink, nor yet for your body; resist not evil, but 
whosoever shall smite thee on one cheek, turn to 
him the other; and if thy eye offend thee pluck it 
out. 

In fact, we have to face the fact that our Chris- 
tianity is not Christian. Perhaps, if Jesus were 
here, he would hesitate to have His name used in 
connection with some of the things now called 
“Christian.” More and more, effective missionaries 
have to discriminate between the principles and 
life of Jesus Christ, and the trappings and con- 
notations of western Christianity; have to sub- 
stitute the religion of Jesus for Christianity, and 
call men to join Christ if they cannot join the 
Church. 

Just at the time when Christianity is at a very 
low ebb in the estimate of non-Christians, how- 
ever, there is a marked drawing to the person of 
Christ. People are beginning to see that they can 
have one without the other. There are today many 
thousands of people in the Orient who are capti- 


62 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


vated with the ethics, ideal, and personality of 
Jesus and who are trying to follow Him, but who 
‘do not want to be labeled as “Christians” or to 
identify themselves with western organizations. 
Experienced observers tell us that it is impossible 
to gauge India’s attitude to Christ by its attitude 
to the Church. Many a heart is converted to 
Christ without being converted to Christianity. 
Hundreds in India are drawn to Jesus as a great 
teacher and as an example of self-less living. 
They will quote His words and cite His example. 
Ten men derive inspiration from His life and 
message for one who joins the Christian Church. 

The recent experience of a noted evangelist in 
India is significant. In city after city he has been 
able to draw large audiences for six nights in 
succession on the single topic “Christ.” A leading 
Hindu daily published outlines of the lectures; 
another orthodox paper published the lecture, 
“Jesus Christ and the Problems of the Day,” in 
full. Students of a Hindu college put off a cricket 
match to hear a lecture on Christ. In summing 
up, one presiding officer said: “I suppose the 
epitome of what the speaker has said is this: 
That the solutions of the problems of the day de- 
pend upon the application of the spirit and the 
thought of Jesus to these problems. I am not a 
Christian, and you may be surprised to hear me 
say that I entirely agree with these conclusions.” 
A Chief Judge in one of the native states said to 
the audience over which he was presiding, “If to 
be like Jesus Christ is what it means to be a 
Christian, I hope we will all be Christians in our 


THE WEST AS PART OF THE WORLD 63 


lives.” A Hindu professor in one of India’s strong- 
est religious centers said to the audience of 
students: “Young men, no other such personality 
as Jesus Christ has ever appeared in the world. 
We can begin this spring festival in no better way 
than in hearing more about Him.” 

Mahatma Gandhi had two pictures on his walls 
in South Africa: one of Christ washing the dis- 
ciples’ feet; the other, the crucifixion—service and 
sacrifice. He openly says that he caught his 
emphasis from the Sermon on the Mount. He 
declares that the principles of Jesus should be 
regulative, not only for the individual, but for 
nations. One of the most influential and re- 
spected missionaries in India recently said: 
“Gandhi has done more to hold up Christ than all 
the missionaries of the past hundred years.” And 
yet there is no indication that Gandhi expects to 
accept Christianity in any western sense of the 
term. 

One of the keenest minds in China, a professor 
in Peking University, recently wrote an article 
mercilessly attacking the Christian religion. The 
Bible was torn apart, missionaries were grilled, 
rice Christians were berated, and Christianity’s 
internal dissensions scorned. But the striking fact 
is that when he came to consider the character of 
Christ himself he had nothing but good to say. 
“The spirit of Jesus must get into the blood of 
every one of the four hundred million people of 
China before we can hope to come out into light, 
out of death into life, out of the pit in which we 
now are.” 


64 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


It is because of the necessity abroad of drawing 
this distinction between Christianity, as popularly 
‘understood, and Christ that the Barrows Lecturer 
to India and the Far East in 1924, after many at- 
tempted subjects, settled on the one word “Jesus” 
as giving him the best approach for Christianity 
unencumbered with misconceptions. Unquestion- 
ably the personality of Jesus is the central and 
characteristic possession of Christianity in distinc- 
tion from the institutions, doctrines, and practices 
which have taken shape about Him. May we 
present Him, without hindering requirements, and 
urge men to follow where He leads? 

In the third place, we recognize that conditions 
in the West demand an indubitable and pervasive 
humility on the part of Christians, and that a deep 
sense of national and racial repentance should 
accompany any further missionary work that we 
do. We have been too self-righteous. We have 
hardly realized how deficient our own civilization 
has been. But we now humbly recognize that our 
democracy has not gone very far, our political 
rectitude has not risen very high, and that even 
the Church has failed to manifest the spirit and 
the power of Christ. The war and social mal- 
adjustments have revealed appalling depths of 
selfishness and corruption in so-called Christian 
countries. It behooves us to walk humbly with 
our God and our brother peoples. Since our 
own nation is not truly Christian, let us approach 
other peoples in no condescending attitude, but in 
the spirit of sincere penitence. Jesus is still say- 
ing, “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the 
things which I say?” 


CHAPTER IV 
FRUIT—THE MOST EFFECTIVE APOLOGETIC 
I 


THERE was a time when the missionary and his 
message were their own main apologetic. World 
communications were so ill-developed when Prot- 
estant missions began that the missionary stood 
before his hearers almost detached from his civi- 
lization. “It was as though, in some great dark- 
ened theater, a clear, white back-drop had been 
let down, a spotlight focused upon it, and, into 
the center of that circle of light, there had stepped 
the figure of a single man. There was nothing 
behind him, nothing beside him, by which to scale 
him up or down.” The message had a chance to 
make its own appeal. It was backed up by author- 
ity, and the missionary’s own life of peace and 
goodwill was an exhibit of the new religion’s 
power. 

But in a startlingly rapid way that whole back- 
ground has been filled in by commercial dealings 
and national aggression, by travelers and wireless, 
by movies and the press, and by the whole disin- 
tegrating and corrupting influence of western 
civilization. From the standpoint of apologetics, 
the significant thing today is that the missionary 
| 65 


66 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


is almost lost against this background. Today 
other voices than that of the missionary inevitably 
interpret what the general movement known as 
Christianity means in practice. For example, in- 
telligent Orientals now know that the business men 
who go to their lands in large numbers represent 
the mass of the so-called Christian peoples much 
more truly than do the missionaries. They are 
the normal fruit of our Christian civilization. If 
in two thousand years Christianity has done so 
little to clean up the West, they feel it is of little 
use to investigate its claims. Corruption in Wash- 
ington, New York, or Philadelphia weakens the 
appeal in China to give up “squeeze.” When fac- 
tories in a Christian land are not run right, the 
argument for the adoption of Christian principles 
in Tokyo and Shanghai thereby loses force. Ori- 
entals see that western material civilization is 
beginning to dominate their lands; they would like 
to see Christianity able to dominate western ma- 
terial civilization. From this standpoint the con- 
version of ourselves to Christianity would be the 
greatest service we could render to the East. 
Similarly, the inability of Christians to dominate 
the policy of their nations toward the Orient and 
the un-Christian acts of western peoples in their 
treatment of Orientals are raising serious ques- 
tions among the peoples of the Orient as to the 
potency or meaning of Christianity. After 
America’s unfortunate action in regard to Ori- 
ental immigration, one of the foremost literary 
men of Japan addressed a public letter to the mis- 
sionaries, asking: “Why do you stay here when 


THE MOST EFFECTIVE APOLOGETIC 67 


your home gardens are rank with weeds?” The 
prestige which Christianity for a time enjoyed 
from its association with the glamour of western 
civilization is shattered, for that civilization is no 
longer an effective argument for the excellence of 
Christianity. In a small world it is soberingly 
true that 
By all ye will or whisper, 
By all ye leave or do, 


The silent, sullen peoples 
Will judge your God and you. 


I 


In other words, the most effective popular apolo- 
getic on the mission field has passed from origins 
to consequences, from roots to fruits. Mere proc- 
lamation is not enough. More and more the people 
of the world are applying Christ’s test to Chris- 
tianity—“By their fruits ye shall know them.” It 
is to this test of life that Christianity is increasingly 
being brought. In so far as we regard the function 
of Christianity to be the transformation of life 
upon the earth into a kingdom of righteousness 
and not merely a means for saving a small rem- 
nant of humanity into a state of future bliss, people | 
will view Christianity objectively and subject it to 
a pragmatic test. If it helps men to a richer and 
a fuller life it will be accepted; in so far as it is 
narrow and impoverishing it will be condemned. 
Not only the ethnic faiths, but Christianity itself, 
must stand or fall by their power to enlarge and 
enrich life. It is because all organized religions 


68 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


are being brought to this bar of judgment that 
men are saying that that religion will conquer the 
‘world which deserves to conquer. 

In particular, the people of India, China, and 
Japan are not going to accept the Bible because of 
some statement as to its inspired origin. They 
will take over this- book as their own when they 
see that it can meet the modern problems of their 
lands. Similarly, Jesus Christ is not going to be 
accepted by the Orient because of positions taken 
with reference to His preéxistence, or His birth. 
Jesus Christ will become their Master when India 
and China and Japan see that He can help with 
their personal and national problems. More and 
more on the mission field the power of Christian- 
ity is to be proved by asking, not whether it can 
be authoritatively established, but what it accom- 
plishes in the lives of men. A direct and funda- 
mental proof will be the worth and practicability 
of its ethical principle of mutual love and sympa- 
thy and service. 


Hl 


This shift in the apologetic for Christianity from 
origins and authority to the actual working of the 
religion puts a greatly enhanced obligation on 
western Chrislians to live out—to incarnate—the 
Gospel. It is obvious, also, that nations as well as 
Churches have missionary responsibilities. A 
great corps of men and women are abroad endeav- 
oring to convert people—to convert them, however, 
to ways we profess, rather than to ways in which 
we actually walk. Here is one of the greatest 


THE MOST EFFECTIVE APOLOGETIC 69 


weaknesses in the Christian enterprise today. 
Each person who labors to bring our home practice 
up to our theory is tremendously undergirding the 
Christian enterprise abroad. If forward-looking 
people in the Orient do not see the Bible and Jesus 
Christ enabling us to solve the problems which face 
us in the West, they are not hkely to try Chris- 
tianity for their own problems. Intelligent non- 
Christians are usually ready to admit the high 
ethical level of the Christian position, but when 
they see the so-called Christian West flout these 
principles in practice, they naturally hesitate to 
change. One is tempted to say that they know too 
much about western life and the extent to which 
its ideals and practices fail to embody the spirit of 
Christ. They have religions of their own whose 
ideals surpass practice. Any effective apologetic 
for Christianity must include a demonstration of 
dynamic among those who profess it. 

In a most real way this links up every Christian 
at home with the success of the Christian adven- 
ture overseas. One no longer has to live abroad 
in order to make his life tell in other lands. As 
soon as the peoples of the earth see the power and 
spirit of the living Christ enabling us of the West 
successfully to meet political injustice, economic 
exploitation, racial discrimination, and material 
standards of success they will begin seriously to 
consider Christianity for their own lives. One of 
the greatest contributions that could be made to 
the cause of missions would be the apologetic 
value arising from a thorough reconstruction of 
our social order after the mind of Christ. To this 


70 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


vital and direct proof of the value of Christianity 
each individual of the West is making his con- 
- tribution for or against. 

Thus far we have called ourselves Christian 
nations, and yet by our failure to let Christ dem- 
onstrate His saving power in us, we have failed 
to draw men to Him. By an utterly unworthy 
representation of Him in the West, we have almost 
hidden His true face. The reduced world in which 
we live with numberless contacts between the ends 
of the earth compels us to face more penetrat- 
ingly now than ever before the sobering fact that 
the efficacy of the Christian witness abroad is con- 
ditioned by the degree to which the principles of 
Christianity are being embodied in our national 
and social life. We must purge our own life from 
untruth and wrong so that our contacts of every 
kind with other peoples will be Christian. For the 
West is immensely handicapped in attempting to 
give what it does not have. Missionary apologists 
recognize that on the great highways of the earth 
Christianity will spread more by contagion than 
by talk, and that even for the corners of the earth 
only a Christian society can effectively conduct a 
Christian mission. In a day when the excellency 
of Christianity needs to be shown by tangible evi- 
dence in western life, responsibility for Chris- 
tianity’s progress abroad rests on each man, 
woman, and child at home. 


IV 


There is another important group that can tre- 
mendously assist in producing the apologetic most 


THE MOST EFFECTIVE APOLOGETIC 71 


needed today. Modern conditions not only make 
those who work for a Christian social order at 
home the very effective colleagues of missionaries, 
but they also make those who go abroad in other 
capacities than that of professional missionaries 
great factors in commending Christianity to an- 
other people. 

As we have seen, communication between the 
West and the East was at a minimum during all 
the first decades of mission work. This meant that 
mission activities constituted a dominating propor- 
tion in international contacts. In those days of 
comparative international segregation, when con- 
tacts were few, slow, and irregular, Christianity 
could not get beyond our borders unless we con- 
sciously took it. This gave a valid importance, 
urgency, and significance to the foreign missionary 
enterprise. But in these days when international 
communications have become far more rapid, 
multiform, and inescapable we are called upon to 
see the importance, urgency, and significance of 
those other outreachings of the West. We have 
not yet adjusted our thoughts and methods to this 
great change in the ratio of mission contacts to 
other international contacts. In the interests of a 
world-wide Christianity it is as important to per- 
meate this increasingly pervasive outreach of the 
West with the spirit of Christ, as it is to continue 
our missionary societies. 

One change demanded by the new conditions is 
that we should give far more consideration to 
agencies that are not professionally missionary. 
A great modern stream of life goes forth from the 


72 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


West to other lands. There are traders, diplo- 
mats, consuls, travelers, educators, social workers, 
civil servants, film promoters, representatives of 
banks or of oil, etc. The relative importance of 
this group may be judged from the fact that Ni- 
geria has 2,800 westerners, of whom 1,200 are gov- 
ernment officials, 1,250 are in commercial concerns 
and mining, and 350 are missionaries; the Gold 
Coast has 3,182 westerners, of whom 2,463 are in 
mercantile operations and mining, 653 in govern- 
ment service,; and 66 are missionaries; Sierra 
Leone has about a thousand westerners, of whom 
80 are missionaries.1. Over three thousand Ameri- 
cans are said to have permanent residence in 
Shanghai. These agencies which are not profes- 
sidnally missionary could—if only our own religion 
were vital enough to us—effectively witness to 
Christianity’s power. On the other hand, they can 
do much to negate the witness of the formal 
agencies of the Church if their note is uncertain 
or antagonistic. We dare not, therefore, confine 
our attention to propagandist agencies alone when 
a host of other voices may make our preaching 
seem like sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. 
The whole world now is very nearly approaching 
the degree of inter-communication realized in the 
first three centuries in the Roman Empire in a 
much smaller area. Just as at that time Chris- 
tianity spread very largely through the witness of 
enthusiastic laymen—Aquila’s and Priscilla’s—so 
now with contacts so varied and close it should 
naturally expand in unorganized ways. Hence our 


*Jones, Thomas Jesse, “Education in Africa,” p. 81. 


THE MOST EFFECTIVE APOLOGETIC 73 


prayer should not alone be for missionaries, but 
also for all men and women of goodwill; for 
administrators, settlers, traders; for social reform- 
ers; for educated men and women who share the 
Christian ideals but are not Christian in name; for 
Christian rulers in mandated territories that they 
may keep in remembrance their trusteeship for 
native peoples; and for all who have to do with 
the perplexing questions of land and labor, taxa- 
tion and trade. 

Without the direct missionary witness the Chris- 
tian influence of all these other agencies would 
lack much of direction and effect; for while con- 
cern for laborers, patience with the unskilled, 
abhorrence of injustice, and all the acts of a lay- 
man’s life speak powerfully, there is also need of 
the explicit witness which missionaries are free 
and trained to give. The fact is, these are sup- 
pleménting expressions of the Christian life. Just 
now, however, we are emphasizing the fact that 
modern conditions increasingly handicap mission- 
ary work unless commerce and governments, 
finance and the press play their part in the great 
team. 

In other words we are recognizing as never 
before that being a missionary is but one of many 
ways of helping to bring in the Kingdom of God 
abroad. At the last quadrennial convention of the 
Student Volunteer Movement definite, planned 
consideration was given to possibilities for Chris- 
tian service both within and without organized 
Christian agencies. The British Christian Student 
Movement has placed before students the impor- 


74 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


tance of such Christian service in non-Christian 
lands as can be rendered in Government employ- 
‘ment and in other ways and is hoping to be able 
to form some bond of union between missionaries, 
civil servants, and others who shared common 
ideals in their university days. With the con- 
viction that discipleship has a place in all walks 
of life, that the engineer and the civil servant have 
their part in God’s purpose for the world as well 
as the missionary, we believe that being a mis- 
sionary should demand no more of Christlikeness 
than any other form of Christian work. Mission- 
ary work is thus not something quite separate and 
apart from all other service to humanity. This 
does not mean a lowering of our standard for 
missionaries, but it does mean that all, in what- 
ever walk of life, should have that absolute 
consecration and readiness for sacrifice that have 
characterized missions at their best. 

Shall we continue to give an exclusive consid- 
eration to the great formal outreach of the Church, 
or shall we seriously attempt to surround other 
agencies of interchange with some kind of a 
religious obligation, blessing, and sanction as well? 
Shall we not count it a normal thing for God to 
commission such? Surely the Church can work 
out a plan or ceremony by which such emissaries 
to other lands could on departing have their sense 
of mission strengthened and -enlist the spiritual 
backing of the local communities which know 
them best. 

It will be seen from the last two sections, that 
the missionary enterprise, far from being an iso- 


THE MOST EFFECTIVE APOLOGETIC 75 


lated affair of boards and churches, links itself 
in vital ways with nations, with our whole social 
order, with the various agents from the West who 
go abroad, and with every man, woman, and child 
at home. All are helping or hindering the effec- 
tiveness with which Jesus Christ is being made 
known as an essential constructive factor in the 
world’s individual, social, and national life. 


V 


The need for an apologetic arising from a more 
vitally Christian West constitutes the most crucial 
problem in connection with carrying the Gospel 
to other peoples today. Our generation could do 
no more convincingly Christian thing than with 
God’s help to reconstruct a profit-seeking indus- 
trial and social order, with its imperialistic coun- 
terpart in government, into an industrial and 
political order which at heart would be based on 
the service, rather than the acquisitive, motive. We 
need an indisputable miracle of redeemed and 
transformed corporate life in Christianity’s west- 
ern home. Hence, some hold that, so far as the 
future of Christianity as a world religion is con- 
cerned, it is vastly more urgent to see that the 
contacts and the outreach of western life are 
permeated with the spirit of the religion we pro- 
fess than it is to carry that religion as a separate 
entity to the ends of the earth. 

This is a perfectly natural and honest reaction. 
Some years ago one of the strongest missionaries 
to Japan decided that the best way he could help 
Japan was to work in America. As one of the 


76 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


secretaries of the Federal Council of Churches in 
America he says, “I am a missionary to Japan in 
America.” One of the ablest missionary execu- 
tives in India has accepted an influential post of 
leadership in America, saying that he and others 
“feel ham-strung until America straightens out.” 
Similarly I know several strong missionaries home 
recently on furlough who feel the deterrent ef- 
fects of home conditions upon the work abroad 
so strongly that they say that the words stick in 
their throats when they attempt to say that Chris- 
tianity will solve China’s problems and bring peace 
to Chinese when it seems to have done so little for 
the lands which most profess it. These mission- 
aries even seriously considered whether they 
should not throw in their lives at this end. Their 
national humility was good; their conclusion not 
so good. For the obligation on us to share Jesus 
Christ with the world can be made clearer and 
stronger than ever before. It was really a situa- 
tion where “these ye ought to have done and not 
to have left the other undone.” These men even- 
tually saw this. But the very fact that men from 
the field had to face such an issue should startle 
us at home into realizing that the Christianization 
of the West has a vital connection with the evan- 
gelization of the East. 

Not the number of missionaries nor the annual 
expenditure of societies but the character of the 
Christianity that is actually lived by those who 
profess it will determine the success or failure of 
foreign missions. Even believers in other faiths 
tell us this. A prominent Christian worker in 


THE MOST EFFECTIVE APOLOGETIC 77 


Jerusalem met a small group of Muhammadan 
leaders in conference outside the city. He asked 
them how Christianity could be made more ap- 
pealing to the people. One man leaned over, 
touched him on the shoulder, and said, “Be Chris- 
tians.” A similar question was asked Mahatma 
Gandhi in India. His first three of four points 
were “practice your religion without adulterating 
it or watering it down, practice it in its rugged 
simplicity, and emphasize love, as love is the cen- 
tral thing in Christianity.” Four times within a 
single address a Muhammadan, speaking in Amer- 
ica, came back to the thought “You have stained 
hands; clean them first.” 

It seems clear that the selfish and exploitive 
aspects of industrialism in the Orient must be 
attacked at the roots, if missions are to appear 
Christian. In so far as the missionary enterprise, 
as such, takes an obvious stand against specific 
cases of political injustice, economic exploitation, 
racial discrimination, and material standards of 
success its note will be more and more convincing 
abroad. Are our churches able to reach the youth 
in our home towns and villages with an interpreta- 
tion of Christianity that relates it to all of life, 
before they go out to the frontiers of civilization 
or lose themselves in its mid stream? 


CHAPTER V 
GOD’S HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 
I 


INEVITABLY, on a little globe only 8,000 miles in 
diameter, with the means of communication rap- 
idly increasing, contacts between the adherents of 
the various living faiths will grow in number and 
complexity. Cultures will be enriched by other 
heritages developed through long centuries. Cus- 
toms and institutions and standards will receive 
mutual criticism and comparison, and differences 
in religion are certain to claim a share of interest. 
Over a billion human folk about this planet are 
facing life and destiny in groupings outside Chris- 
tianity. It behooves us, therefore, to inquire what 
our attitude to other forms of belief is going to 
be. A right attitude is important as well as a 
right method. 

Seventy-five years ago the opinion was general 
among Christians that non-Christian religions 
were more or less the works of the devil, or that 
scheming priests had invented these faiths in 
order to deceive the people and enslave them to 
priestly influence. Down to the time of ration- 
alism, the Christian Church sponsored a view of 
the world to the effect that original perfection 
was followed by imperfection. According to this 

78 


GOD’S HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 79 


view, only the people who adhered to the original 
revelation continued aright. The others all went 
astray and thus gave rise to the ethnic faiths. 
Any fragments of good to be found in these faiths 
were either bait cunningly devised by Satan to 
mislead the soul, or imitations or borrowings from 
the revelation completed in Christianity. It is 
not strange that the attitude of many of the early 
missionaries to any non-Christian belief was one 
of outspoken opposition or of uncompromising 
denunciation. These religions were often spoken 
of as systems of unredeemed darkness and error. 

That unsympathetic attitude is not yet wholly 
extinct. I remember an instance of the inflexible 
mind, exhibited in the discussion held by a group 
of newly appointed missionaries during a journey 
across the Pacific. Among them was a lady who, 
no matter what topic was suggested, wandered off 
into a tirade, condemning alli religions except her 
particular branch of the Christian faith. It was 
not surprising that a year later she was recalled 
by the board that had appointed her; for one who 
saw no good in other people could be of little help 
to them. 

Most of us have not been so outspoken as she 
was; but she showed in sharp relief a tendency to 
an intolerant, non-sympathetic, undiscriminating 
attitude all too common. In truth we have been 
far more ready to condemn than to commend. We 
have been negligent about seriously studying the 
content and meaning of the customs, institutions, 
and findings of other faiths. We have been less 
ready to receive than to give. 


80 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


A harmful effect of this earlier and harsher atti- 
tude is seen in the mistaken judgments often made 
by those who come into touch with non-Christian 
faiths for the first time. Even a limited knowledge 
of these religions shows that they contain some 
truth. Those who have been taught to’ believe that 
no truth is to befound in any religion other than 
Christianity are, in reaction, very likely to adopt 
the opposite conclusion that all religions are of: 
much the same value, all containing more or less 
of truth and all pointing to the same goal. The 
corrective for this is a more thorough grasp both 
of Christianity and of non-Christian religions. 


Il 

As a result of comparative studies in religion 
during the last three-fourths of a century a 
marked change in attitude to the ethnic faiths has 
come about. Every religion in its essence is seen 
to be a prolonged prayer for life from the unseen 
world. Actual friendship with those who worship 
in a way different from our own often deepens 
rather than lessens our respect for them. 

No student of Chinese history is disposed 
to minimize the great service rendered by 
Confucianism in the moral discipline of the Chi- 
nese people. More than one missionary carries 
the Analects of Confucius with him on his itin- 
erary and finds in this ancient law many a fruitful 
text for a Christian sermon. Many Chinese Chris- 
tians could use, Paul’s metaphor and say that 
Confucianism was their schoolmaster to lead them 
to Christ. 


GOD’S HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 81 


A certain missionary to Japan made it a rule of 
his village preaching always to preach the first 
day from the Buddhist scriptures in order to show 
the people that they had not yet lived up to their 
own best. A missionary of great influence in India — 
held that it was a bounden duty of every worker 
among Hindus to read through every year the 
Bhagavad Gita, the “Lord’s Song,” the supreme 
poetic utterance of Hinduism. The sacred scrip- 
tures of Taoism contain this fine passage: | 

To those who are good to me, | am good; and to 
those who are not good to me, I am also good, and 
thus all get to be good. To those who are sincere 
to me, I am sincere; and to those who are not 
sincere to me, I am also sincere, and thus all get 
to be sincere. 


One of the most devout and scholarly mission- 
aries in India tells us that in the Rigvedic pantheon 
with its chaos of deities imperfectly personalized 
is one, Varuna, the august witness of the deeds of 
men. In him we meet with a series of truly ethical 
ideas—contemporaneous with pre-exilic Hebrew 
literature when Yahweh stood in the midst of a 
multitude of other gods—the conception of the 
holy will of Varuna and of sin as a transgression 
of his law; the conception of morality as of the 
inmost nature of things; the sense of sin gained 
through the pressure of disease and affliction, and 
the consciousness that fellowship with Varuna can 
be broken; confession of sin to Varuna and prayer 
for deliverance; and the experience of Varuna’s 
mercy and grace as followed by slave-like devo- 

_*“Tas-Teh-King,” 49: 2. 


82 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


tion on the part of the sinner. Conceptions and 
aspirations such as these have had no adequate 
fulfilment in Hinduism but, as Dr. Griswold points 
out, have obvious points of contact with Biblical 
religion.” 

Often some of the best things are found, not in 
the classic literature, but in the outreachings after 
God by the more modern poet-saints. Listen to this 
bit of imagery by Tukaram, the seventeenth-cen- 
tury Marathi poet and saint: 

It is needless to lay a child in the mother’s 
arms; she draweth it towards her by her own 
instinct. Wherefore should I take thought? He 
that hath the charge will bear the burden. Un- 
asked, the mother keepeth sweetmeats for the 
child; in eating them herself she hath no pleasure. 
When it is busied in play, she seeketh and bringeth 
it in; she sitteth pressing it tightly to her breast. 
When it is sick, she is restless as parched corn on 
the fire. Tuka saith: “Take no thought for thy 
body; the Mother will not suffer the child to be 
harmed.” 


Growing willingness to see good in other faiths 
and peoples is evidenced in the selection of quota- 
tions from the literature of the world’s principal 
religions used in the International House, New 
York—that magnificently conceived home for for- 
eign students, both men and women, of all races 
and creeds. The following are the passages: Con- 
fucian, “What you do not like when done unto 
yourself, do not unto others”; Buddhist, “Eschew 
all evil, cherish good, cleanse your inmost 


* Griswold, H. D., “The Religion of the Rig Veda,” esp. 
pp. 351-375. 


GOD’S HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 83 


thought”; Hindu, “Lead me from the unreal to the 
real, from darkness to light, from death to immor- 
tality”; Taoist, “To know the Eternal is enlighten- 
ment”; Zoroastrian, “The best and most beautiful 
of all religions—good thoughts, good words, good 
deeds”; Jewish, “The stranger that dwelleth with 
you shall be unto you as one born among you”; 
Islamic, “God created man and is closer to him 
than his jugular vein”; Christian, “Love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as 
thyself.” 

Sympathetic missionaries are willing to see good 
in Islam. They tell us that there is a certain at- 
tainment of democracy among Muhammadans. At 
least in early times no distinctions were made 
because of color, poverty, or social status. In a 
mosque—if not outside—a peasant may stand be- 
side a prince, and a beggar may perform his prayer 
close to a man of wealth. Many are ready to 
acknowledge that Islam stands firmly against idol- 
atry and polytheism; secures zealous devotion to 
the will of God as they interpret it; inculcates the 
habit of prayer; and has visioned a world-wide 
sway for Allah. 

One cannot consider this more liberal attitude 
to the non-Christian religion without realizing that 
it raises some very hard problems. What does it 
involve with reference to the conception of God 
and his relation to the world? How does it affect 
one’s theory of revelation, of inspiration, or of the 
authority of the Scripture? In the light of this 
new emphasis what shall we think of retribution 
and salvation? Would the enterprise of foreign 


84 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


missions have a greater chance for success if it 
faced an unrelieved “heathenism”’? Or is the 
coming of the Kingdom easier because other faiths 
have tried to meet the needs of seeking souls? If 
we acknowledge that non-Christian religions have 
been pedagogues for some people leading them to 
Christ, will that affect the scriptural canon? Will 
we be ready to let the Chinese find in the Analects 
that which is fulfilled in Christ? Should we be 
willing for the Hindu to think of the Bhagavad Gita 
as being part of his Old Testament? Or will the 
best portions of the non-Christian scriptures be 
used as occasional supplementary reading, just as 
in certain of our Churches regular yearly readings 
are taken from the Apocrypha? 

One helpful factor in the approach to such ques- 
tions is the increasing emphasis placed on the 
belief that the Spirit of God is a living, actual 
reality in the life of every people. We are more 
ready to believe that “there was the true light, 
even the light which lighteth every man coming 
into the world,” and that God has “suffered all 
nations to walk in their own way, and yet He left 
not Himself without witness.” We are therefore 
not surprised to find a certain reality and rich 
variety of experience in non-Christian religious 
leaders, and positive values in certain elements of 
the thought, literature, and practice of other re- 
ligions which challenge respect and most careful 
constructive appraisal. God spoke to the Hebrews 
through their prophets “in divers portions and in 
divers manners.” In like manner He has spoken 
to the munis and saints of the East, though they 


GOD’S HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 85 


have been able to hear Him less: clearly. Each 
people has caught some intimations of His nature 
and will, each broken insight being prophetic of 
the perfect revelation that was to come. 

As a result of our conviction that God’s Spirit 
has ever been brooding over man, we realize that 
our task must be a continuation of the work God 
has already begun. We do not have to begin 
de novo. Hence we find the British Christian Stu- 
dent Movement explaining in “The Nature of the 
Missionary Enterprise” that “there is much about 
God and man and life in Hinduism, in Buddhism, 
in Confucianism, in Islam, and even in Animism 
that is profoundly true.” In one of their great 
missionary conventions we find the topic, “God in 
the world’s religions.” 

The greater the effort to understand and the 
more purposeful the determination to discover 
what. values have emerged in the age-long quest 
of older lands for the Divine, the more positive 
becomes the assurance that the coming of Christ 
to these peoples, while supplanting many things, 
will, on the other hand, enrich and fulfill many 
others. It is dawning on the Christian constitu- 
ency, both at home and abroad, that a continuance 
of the old appreach to non-Christian peoples 
would mean failure to modern missions. 

More fundamental, however, than motivation 
from fear of the failure of missions, is the realiza- 
tion that a blind, unapprcciative approach is not 
in the spirit of our Master. Just as a chosen people 
of old, following the very climax of their great 
prophetic leadership, were led to see Israel as 


86 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


third, with Egypt and Assyria first and second as 
blessings in the midst of the earth (Isa. 19:24), so 
we Christians have had to learn that God has not 
been working exclusively through Christianity. No 
part of mankind has a monopoly of His gifts. Off 
in India, in touch with those of other faiths who 
were lovers of truth and goodness, this conception 
came to me as a great relief—as a new and inspir- 
ing truth that helped me to see my Father work- 
ing, and in a very real way deepened my sense 
of kinship and fellowship with the best among 
whom I lived. The Christian who believes that 
God is at work in all His world joyously recognizes 
and welcomes every evidence of His footsteps. 
Each and every insight is from Him and deserves 
our love and service. 


Ii 


In the readjustment incidental to this more sym- 
pathetic point of view, the vocabulary used by mis- 
sions has been undergoing a gradual change. 
Many have been trying to eradicate from their 
vocabulary various military expressions associ- 
ated with evangelism. For each religion has its 
pilgrims, and Christians who meet searchers after 
truth off in a quiet village or at the great cross- 
roads of the earth, cannot think of them in the 
terms of battle. Such expressions as “great battle 
fields of Christianity,” “warfare against Islam,” 
“conquest for Christ,” “victory for Christianity,” 
“enemies of Christ,” “battle line on the foreign 
field,’ “trenches in heathen lands,” no longer 
sound appropriate. In days when the best Chris- 


GOD’S HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 87 


tian sentiment is striving for the outlawry of war, 
we recoil even from metaphors which seem to 
make the presentation of the Christian message 
appear as an aggressive and military attack. Such 
analogies are offensive to those among whom we 
go, and do not embody the spirit of our Master. 
How much more richly beautiful is His vocabu- 
lary—seed, light, leaven, life! 

In the effort to get rid of sentimentalism and 
base the Church’s international outreach on firm 
ground, many of our missionary hymns are being 
quietly laid aside. Many persons are reacting 
against that smug complacency which tends to 
group all non-Christians together as “men be- 
nighted,” “sin-sick souls,” “savage breasts,’ and 
“sheep straying in the dark.” Many an earnest 
missionary comes back to be shocked at the un- 
Christian aspects of our western life; and shrinks 
from the implication that only off in the Orient 
are those who are “unfit to see His face.” It is 
not so much that expressions such as “heathen 
darkness,” “shades of death,” and “prison house 
of sin,’ are not literally true, but that their use 
with reference solely to our brothers overseas leads 
to a false pride and sentimental pity in ourselves. 

“Heathen” is a word which has so degenerated 
that most people resolutely lay it aside. Orig- 
inally it denoted those who do not acknowledge 
the God of the Bible and therefore applied tech- 
nically to those who are not Christians, Jews, or 
Muhammadans. But dictionaries tell us that the 
word now means “any irreligious, rude, barbarous, 
or unthinking person or class.” It is therefore in- 


88 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


creasingly resented by intelligent members of those 
races to which it has been applied. No one who 
heard it could soon forget the earnest appeal of a 
Holyoke student, a Chinese, who rose in a confer- 
ence and besought the audience not to use the word 
again. Japanese Buddhists, when sending in their 
contribution to the Near East Relief, said, “We 
send herewith to adopt one thousand orphans— 
but don’t call us ‘heathen’ any more.” Devout 
adherents to the higher, non-Christian faiths are 
not inclined toward Christ by hearing that mis- 
sionaries are sent out “to save men from heathen- 
ism.” The usefulness of the word and that of its 
derivatives is over and they should be laid aside. 
They are no longer brotherly words. We may well 
pray that the words of our mouths may not un- 
necessarily wound, and that they may be accept- 
able in His sight. 


IV 


One of the outstanding results of the contact of 
Christianity with other faiths has been to stimu- 
late a progressive sloughing off of what is crude 
and false. For example, in the time of Alexander 
Duff, the great pioneer educational missionary to 
India, the choice had to be between Hindu- 
ism and Christianity. Now there are forty reform 
sects in Hinduism alone, in each of which more or 
less of the crude in Hinduism has been repudiated. 

Bengal has a great festival called Durga-puja. 
“Durga” represents the fiercer, more destructive 
side of the Indian conception of divinity. The 
commonest picture represents her in riot of blood 


GOD’S HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 89 


and carnage. Skulls and severed heads hang from 
her neck; and her tongue, thirsting for more blood, 
protrudes from her mouth. Countless goats and 
buffaloes have been sacrificed to her. Concerning 
this festival a recent writer? says: “The puja 
seems to be growing yearly gentler in spirit. The 
goddess keeps her ten arms and weapons of men- 
ace, but the latter are hidden with tinsel and 
lotuses; the face is benign, and the whole figure is 
made beautiful. Fewer goats are sacrificed, fewer 
houses have their own images, the puja becoming 
less of a worship, and much more just a national 
holiday of great happiness.” 

One of the popular seasonal festivals in India is 
Holi, held in honor of Kama, the Hindu Cupid. 
Among the practices characteristic of the festival 
is the singing of songs celebrating Krishna’s love 
episodes with the herdswomen; the shouting of 
obscene words to passers-by, especially to women; 
and the throwing of colored liquid and powder 
(the popular significance of which is impure) over 
one another and passers-by. Although the last cus- 
tom is kept up by families in their own courtyards, 
indiscriminate throwing is rapidly being sup- 
pressed. An experienced missionary in India 
writes: “I remember when I first went to India 
we gave up work for a week during the Holi festi- 
val. But of late even in villages I have never had 
to stop even for a day.” It is now possible for a 
respectable woman to go about during the carnival 
rites of Holi week without being insulted and mo- 


antec: E. J., “Bengali Religious Lyrics, Sakta,” 
Dds tae 


90 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


lested by the votaries of an unholy god, as it was 
not even fifteen years ago. 

Observers in Japan report that one of the most 
significant things to be seen there is the markedly 
increased activity of the Buddhist Church and its 
adoption wholesale of many Christian methods, 
such as preaching; parish work, Sunday-schools, 
day-schools, education for the priesthood, multi- 
plication of magazines and free distribution of 
literature. The Nanking Buddhist Seminary de- 
clares its aim to be, not training scholars to bene- 
fit themselves, but training men to benefit the 
world. Here, as in many other Buddhist schools, 
the monkish life of social uselessness has become 
a thing of the past. | 

What is the right attitude toward these evidences 
of growth or purification in ethnic faiths? Shall 
we feel regretful, as did a great leader in mission- 
ary effort, who, after describing various reform 
movements in non-Christian religions, added, 
“These efforts are, unfortunately, succeeding to a 
great degree, and many are thus being kept away 
from Christianity who were open to receive it”? 
Or shall we be thankful when Christian attitudes 
and purposes are developed in adherents to non- 
Christian religions, and when the finer spirits 
among them struggle to cleanse and spiritualize 
their faiths? While recognizing that all such de- 
velopments do very likely make it harder to win 
converts, ought we not to be thankful for every 
step toward purity, holiness, and the Kingdom 
made under whatever label? 


GOD’S HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 91 


Vv 


As we saw in Chapter III, a distinction can be 
made between Christianity as we practice it and 
Christ. It is not primarily our religious system in 
the sense of our practice in worship and our body 
of doctrines that we can confidently hold high as 
the preéminent standard for all men. It is not 
success for our “faith” that we most want. Rather 
is it that men shall increasingly learn to live in 
the spirit, with. the purposes, and by the methods 
of Jesus Christ. 

But the two are linked together and hence it 
should be our deep concern to see that our system 
throws off what is untrue to Christ. Only Chris- 
tianity at its best will be able to make progress in 
the face of reformation in other faiths. Only a 
Christianity that has freed itself from invalid ac- 
cretions, conflicting dogmas, and a mind that wars 
against science can compete with the best in the 
purified ethnic faiths. Before the best of these, 
Christianity is on its mettle. In many respects 
Buddhism’s standard is so high that the Chris- 
tianify which shall win the adherence of the fol- 
lowers of the Buddha must be of a thoroughly 
loving and sacrificial type. To go forth to the great 
non-Christian faiths with an interpretation of 
Christianity which is unscientific or unethical or 
merely provincial is not only to court failure, but to 
prejudice all later approach. The very success of 
Christianity in helping to purge the great religions 
of the world demands of us an ever-improving 
understanding of our faith in order that we may 


92 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


be worthy witnesses of the preéminent One at its 
very center. 

Before one of the religions, however, it is not 
Christianity’s success, but its failure, that should 
spur us on. For thirteen centuries Islam and 
Christianity have been bitter rivals. In this con- 
flict we have to confess that far more converts 
have been made by Islam from among Christians 
than have been made by Christianity from among 
Muhammadans. Lands which were the home of 
the early Church—North Africa, Asia Minor, and 
Syria—are now overwhelmingly Muhammadan. 
Nowhere has Christianity won a marked and 
widespread success. But worst of all, these cen- 
turies of religious and political antagonism have 
instilled in our hearts a deep-seated prejudice, a 
hatred, an unreasoning antipathy that warps our 
judgment and attitude on every Moslem question. 
As one looks over some of the books on Muham- 
“madanism of the past, one scarcely wonders that 
Moslem lands should have been closed to Christian 
missionaries. During the late Greco-Turkish War 
venomed wishes regarding a Moslem state were 
unblushingly voiced even by acknowledged fol- 
lowers of the Christ. 

The demand from this situation has been un- 
mistakable, Missionaries to Moslems have seen it 
and are striving for the necessary adjustments. 
They know that the exterminating passion of the 
Crusades will not do. They see that the ruthless 
political and economic pressure of Christian na- 
tions must give way. They acknowledge that any 
bald, unsympathetic proselytization would be dis- 


GOD’S HAND IN OTHER FAITHS 93 


astrous. If, through us, Moslems are to understand 
Jesus Christ and be drawn to Him, the Christian 
approach, not only individual and missionary but 
national also, must be in the spirit of service, in 
humility, in patience, and in love. We are finding 
ways to see and to meet the human needs which 
the Moslems feel. Disinterested, practical, minis- 
trant goodwill with very sincere humility for the 
failures of the West, and with a very genuine 
appreciation of the values in Moslem character 
and civilization is characteristic of the best 
present-day approach to Moslems. Missionaries 
are making it unmistakably clear that they come 
as friends. Does not this attitude need to become 
more pervasive in the West? 

The purpose of this chapter has been to encour- 
age a sympathetic appreciation of good wherever 
found. Unquestionably there are dangers in this 
attitude. Let us consider these in the following 
chapter. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE COMBINATION OF CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS * 


In the peaceful and progressive integration of 
the races and civilizations of the East and West, 
which is one of the greatest problems confronting 
human intelligence today, it is exceedingly desir- 
able that all should approach the whole range of 
differences—social, artistic, political and religious 
—both with convictions and with a humble teach- 
able spirit. To do otherwise would prove one to 
be unjustifiably immature or narrowly provincial. 


I 


A missionary is an advocate. He is an advocate 
because he has convictions. He is one who has 
done conclusive thinking, who glows from what 
he has experienced. There is no -place for the 
habitual neutrality of vascillating sieve-minded- 
ness. For the world’s thirst will not be satisfied 
by such. It is waiting for those who can say, “I 


*No one word has proved satisfactory for the attitude 
suggested in this chapter. Words are very unsatisfactory 
media of communication when once they pass away from 
the concrete. The same word may carry commendable 
connotations for one person and bristle with objectionable 
ones for another. Perhaps the reader can make a better 
selection than those I have ventured to use. At least we 
can (if it seems desirable) strive for the attitude ‘even 
though it be hard to name. 


94 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 95 


have found the Christ”; who can testify about 
“things which we have seen with our eyes, that 
which we beheld, and our hands have handled, 
concerning the Word of Life.” There are things 
that can be known, things that are certain, things 
that can be experienced. And so when a person is 
sent from one civilization to another positive con- 
victions are in order. The missionary enterprise 
is an effort to share indubitable values in Jesus 
Christ. 

In the comparative study of religion and in dis- 
cussions with those of other faiths, we tend to set 
off one religion reduced to concepis over against 
another religion reduced to concepts. This ab- 
stracting process leaves out the warmth of feeling 
and reality which is such a large part of experience. 
It is the contention of this chapter that there is a 
place for such conscious and impartial weighing 
of the good wherever found, but at the very be- 
ginning let it be said that one should not remain 
continuously in this mood. After coming from the 
arena of fair and open discussion, one should cen- 
ter his values and let convictions glow. 

Certain depths of reality are not experienced 
except as an enthusiastic participant. If I am all 
the time weighing, and treating people and re- 
ligions as specimens, I will not get the deepest 
values. I must have life apart from the onlooker 
mood, or lose the ability to judge with insight. 
Even in discussion it is right to share these en- 
thusiasms, to become the advocate, to speak with 
all the ardent conviction and warmth of inside 

feeling—providing it is plain to all that in this one 


96 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


is not attempting to play the réle of referee. While, 
as we Shall see, it is part of the professional quali- 
fications for missionaries that they should be 
ready to weigh evidence of truth or value in ex- 
perience which we do not associate with Chris- 
tianity and evidence of deficiencies in our own 
conceptions, yet every missionary should primarily 
be an advocate with convictions for which i 
would be willing to die, if need be. 


Il 


But there is also a need for fair-minded teach- 
ableness in a missionary. Let me state some of 
the problems that arise when Christianity in its 
spread touches new peoples and cultures. They 
may illustrate the need of possessing a mind at 
once open to new possibilities and yet alerily dis- 
criminating. Suppose a Chinese Christian scholar 
suggests that loyalty is the central Christian virtue. 
“I preach about the loyalty of Jesus,” he says. 
Should we have a closed mind to this man’s vision, 
and refuse to consider his point of view because it 
seems to us long since settled that love holds this 
central place? Or will we listen to this Christian, 
representing a different upbringing, different tra- 
ditions, different race, different culture, and see 
what his understanding of the Spirit is? 

Suppose that the Indian Church should feel that 
owing to the emphasis on baptism the word “Chris- 
tian” has come to signify merely those who have 
undergone this rite and the children of such, that 
very largely the word is losing for India its moral 
significance, and that Christians are looked upon 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 97 


too often simply as another caste and not as people 
with a distinctly superior kind of life because in 
touch in a unique way with a unique Power; and 
suppose that in order to correct this impression 
they wanted publicly to announce that baptism is 
not necessary to become a Christian or a member 
of the Christian Church. Would you want your 
missionaries to consider this question absolutely 
on its merits? 

Should they listen with an open mind to see 
whether we have missed something when they hear 
Gandhi say that the West has misinterpreted the 
Christ? 

Or let us consider two pointed questions actually 
put to a group of responsible secretaries of mis- 
sionary societies by a distinguished Chinese Chris- 
tian in 1923: 


How far are you ready to go with the Chinese 
Church in the revaluation of matters touching 
faith and order as they are known in the West? 
Secondly, how far are you ready to go with the 
Chinese Church in accepting with discrimination 
the contributions that China may make to Chris- 
tianity for its enrichment or even reconstruction? 


Would you hope that these board secretaries 
answered that they would give sympathetic con- 
sideration to any proposal from the Chinese 
Church even though it might mean change? Or 
would you like them to discourage all such in- 
itiative in thinking, and insist that the Church 
standards were worked out hundreds of years ago 
and they do not expect them to change; and that 


98 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


Christianity as they know it needs no enrichment 
or reconstruction at the hands of China? 

We are told? that when the Bantu in Africa 
have awakened from their mental slumber and 
have done their own thinking for a while, they will 
write their own creeds in phrases that appear ade- 
quate to their minds and in metaphors that appeal 
to their imagination, and will frame their own 
Church polity, as European nations did, on the 
model of their secular institutions. 

The open yet discriminating mind is needed in 
connection with various experiments which earn- 
est missionaries try in order to make Jesus known 
in more winsome and effective ways. There is a 
Christian monastery near Nanking, China, where 
a Norwegian missionary, with the support and 
approval of many of the recognized leaders of the 
Christian movement in China, has recently begun 
a new approach. The buildings are very simple 
and as much like those of a Buddhist monastery 
as possible. Those who come in search of re- 
ligious truth find a lotus pond, a temple bell, a 
guest room, Buddhist and Christian symbols and 
incense burning on an altar behind which is the 
picture of Christ in Gethsemane. The object is to 
provide a place where, amid familiar surround- 
ings, Buddhists may learn of Christ, and to dis- 
cover and to use the truth in Buddhism with the 
conviction that such truth will not be out of har- 
mony with the Christian spirit. At worship the 
song may be a Christian hymn, a Jewish psalm 

SA PH Teun W. C., “Race Problems in the New Africa,” 
p. : 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 99 


or a passage from a Buddhist psalter. One of the 
most spiritual, trusted and experienced of mis- 
sionaries reports, after visiting this center, that 
when he sees how one after another is drawn from 
near or far to hear this strange new teaching that 
does not discard the beautiful and true in the old 
faith, but builds with some of these old stones on 
the Christian foundation, and when he feels the 
earnest, helpful.atmosphere of the place, he hopes 
that here may be a promise of the future. Would 
you be ready with discriminating sympathy to ap- 
praise this experiment on its merits? 

Difficult questions come up involving standards 
of morality, forms of worship and methods of gov- 
ernment. The Commission of the London Mis- 
sionary Society to India, in 1922, was several times 
asked what would be the action of their society 
(which is Congregational in polity) if an Epis- 
copal system were adopted by the churches it had 
been nurturing. Still other possible changes due 
to indigenous thought are suggested by an Indian 
Christian who, thinking over the reorganization 
of his church along lines of his national heritage, 
writes: 

“The future unity of the Indian Church will not 
be the product of any massive organization. In- 
dividual churches must be as simple and complete 
as the Indian village. A Christian spiritual habi- 
tation should be as simple as an Indian hut. The 
vision of the united church that rises before my 
mind is not that of a grand, imposing cathedral, 
within whose ample roof the children of India will 


100 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


gather to worship their Lord, but that of numer- 
ous small islets in a sea, cut off from each other 
‘on the surface, but united together by the waters 
of the sea and by the all-embracing atmosphere. 
The village and town churches will be linked to- 
gether by a band of wandering sadhus, who would 
act as the circulatory system of the churches, and 
bring to the individual churches a sense of the 
greatness, largeness, and catholicity of God’s 
spiritual universe, thus saving them from stag- 
nation and isolation.” ° 

A group of churches in China has three creeds— 
the Apostles’ Creed of the second century, one 
made in Kansas City, and one drafted in 1920 by a 
Chinese Christian. A pastor is at liberty to use 
whichever creed he most prefers. 

Both in China and in India church members are 
asking how they may observe in a Christian way 
some of their popular feast days. Others are work- 
ing on forms of Christian ceremony which will ex- 
press in an indigenous way true ideas of marriage. 
In connection with services of religious worship, 
many are pondering over how customs and ideas 
close to the soil may be observed and adapted to 
express Christian truths. Here and there is a 
Bible teacher working out with her pupils, many 
of whom come from an absolutely non-Christian 
background, forms of worship which shall have in 
them some of the color and rhythm characteristic 
of most primitive religions and elements of which 
mark the more developed religions, but from which 


*Young Men of India, vol. XXIX, p. 541. 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 101 


Protestant Christianity has fought shy for so long. 

The Chinese Church is reopening the question 
of ancestor worship on which all early mission- 
aries took such a decided stand; they are asking 
whether their old observances may not be so puri- 
fied and adapted as to become a truly Christian 
form of commemoration of their dead. They may 
easily settle on an expression for this deeply in- 
grained feeling which will not be congenial to 
those of another culture. One Chinese scholar 
urges the doing away with the Old Testament, be- 
cause he thinks that it—especially the imprecatory 
Psalms—has had a large place in making the West 
warlike. 

We may as well adjust ourselves to the fact that 
the decisions of thoroughly independent and in- 
digenous Churches may prove to be times of test- 
ing for us. It is already perfectly evident that the 
rising Churches abroad will have many a sug- 
gestion to make as to form, polity and doctrine. At 
least one of their leaders sees that it “will call for 
unshaken faith in God as Chinese Christians under- 
take to formulate for themselves what Christ 
means to them, and to determine the forms of their 
institutions.” * Will the respect we want to have 
for their initiative and judgment enable us to con- 
tinue to work with them and to give to their need, 
even though their decisions may seem strange to 
us? Will we be flexible enough to consider these 
suggestions on their merits? 


‘Report of the Foreign Missions Conference of North 
America, 1923, p. 209. 


102 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


Tih 


This need for an open and receptive yet thor- 
oughly discriminating mind, arising out of the 
practical situations caused by Christianity’s touch 
with other cultures, has been clearly seen by dis- 
cerning missionary leaders. One of the questions 
discussed by the Foreign Missions Conference of 
North America in 1923 was whether our western 
interpretations of the teachings of Jesus and His 
apostles growing out of centuries of Christian 
history and study tend to limit the usefulness of 
our missionaries as they seek to help the young 
Churches abroad.’ During the discussion a secre- 
tary of the National Christian Council for China 
very pertinently asked the commissioning Churches 
of the West, as they sent missionaries forth, “Are 
you instructing them to let the Chinese take the 
lead in determining the character of the Churches 
which you are trying to establish?’ *® In closing 
the discussion the chairman called attention to the 
fact that the Christians of other lands “are com- 
plaining that we are teaching them and claiming 
the right to speak authoritatively, because we are 
western”; and he ended by saying: 


Iam urging with all my heart that we seek most 
earnestly to cultivate a sympathetic and teachable 
spirit. I would not insist, before entering upon a 
friendly discussion of the most difficult things in 
religion, that each of my hearers should repeat the 
Nicene, Athanasian, or even the Apostles’ Creed. 

*Report of the Foreign Missions Conference of North 


America, 1923, p. 154ff 
° Ibid., p. 168. 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 103 


No, no, no! Christianity was well established be- 
fore we had any such formulas as these, and if it 
had not been, it wouldn’t have survived them.’ 


In another session of this same conference an 
outstanding Chinese Christian, while giving un- 
hesitating testimony to China’s need for more mis- 
sionaries, specified certain desirable qualifications 
among which was the statement, “We need those 
who are willing to learn as well as to teach.” § 

In a bulletin intended for recruits, Bishop Fred 
B. Fisher, of Calcutta, makes a plea for freedom 
from religious conceit in those who go abroad. 


I do not use “conceit” in any bad sense. I mean 
sureness. It is sometimes called “cocksureness.” 
That is to say, we must be unprejudiced regarding 
another man’s belief, and we must not be foo sure 
of our own traditions. 

We are living in a growing world. Larger social 
and religious contacts may readjust some of our 
thinking and interpretation. That may seem im- 
possible to us, Just after we have been filled to 
the brim by the wisdom that is to be found in our 
colleges, but think about it a minute. In college 
a man has a more or less limited contact with 
faculty and student body. He comes to college 
from a home where his contacts are limited. All 
his life he moves in a limited realm. Now we 
ask him to cross the ocean and come into contact 
with people who have been thinking for three 
thousand years. Might it not be well for him to 
go not being too sure of his position? Let him have 
his mind open to adjustment. Every college pro- 
fessor who puts that attitude of mind in a Sader 


*[bid., pp. 169-70. 
*Ibid., p. 209. 


104. WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


is doing far better than the man who attempts 
simply to implant a rigid defense of a static faith.® 


IV 


What are some of the reasons why teachable- 
ness is highly desifable when one undertakes to 
share values on an international scale? In the 
first place it is a very practical matter, at least 
for all who attempt to approach the alert informed 
and critical educated classes in other lands. Pro- 
fessor John Dewey, after his two years in China, 
said that he met many Chinese who were resentful 
at our attitude of having all the truth. It is pointed 
out that the intolerant attitude of many of the 
Christian propagandists is a barrier to the spread 
of truth and open-mindedness.” The presumption 
of the white man everywhere increasingly arouses 
indignation. The dominant spirit of nationalism 
leads each people to glorify their ancient heritage 
and to fear as a calamity the loss of their culture 
and religion under the influence of the West. 

Under these circumstances suppose you were an 
intelligent, university trained Hindu, Muham- 
madan, or Buddhist, and that two missionaries 
approached you about religion. Let us suppose 
that one did not try to appreciate the value in your 
religion; studied it, but only to find weak spots 
and material for refutation; was oblivious of the 
contribution your race might make to the develop- 
ment of Christian ideals; constantly assumed and 


° News-Bulletin of Personnel, M.E.C., August, 1924, p. 1. 
; aD eS pamphlet of the forthcoming Pan-Pacific 
nstitute. 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 105 


acted on his own theological rightness, and offered 
Christianity on the basis of authority. Suppose 
that the other was as manifestly enthusiastic over 
the religious values he possessed, was as thor- 
oughly convinced of their truth and efficacy, and 
yet frankly and sincerely asked you to share your 
highest vision of truth and reality, showing a 
readiness to discover the value these truths had to 
you. Which of these men would commend him- 
self most to you? Would it be the closed-minded 
witness, or would it be the one so loyal to truth 
as he sees it that he manifestly would be willing 
to learn and who unostentatiously interprets the 
fundamental ethical and spiritual contributions 
for life that Christianity is prepared to make? 

In the long run we can trust the love for truth 
in man. Where men feel that in an unbaised way 
one is appealing to their sense of truth, and where 
in the appeal a passion for truth is displayed, 
rather than for one’s own position, one may trust 
that appeal finally to win, no matter what the 
obstacles in the way. 

Some evidently think a different standard than 
this is advisable for the less mature. A pamphlet 
on discussion groups issued by one of our mission- 
ary societies urges leaders not to ask such a ques- 
tion as “Why should Muhammadanism not remain 
the religion of Africa?” For then “one’s thoughts 
are focused on the good qualities of Muhammadan- 
ism. It is quite possible that a member of a class 
not quite firmly convinced will arrive at the con- 
clusion that Muhammadanism is quite good 
enough for Africa.” Rather, so the author says, 


106 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


should one ask, “What elements in the Christian 
religion make it valuable for Africa?” for then 
“one’s thoughts are focused on the value of 
Christianity.” 

Perhaps some may wish to make out a case for 
relieving the immature from the high adventure 
of the open mind. ~ Similarly, some might think it 
right to relieve Christians in America and Britain, 
snugly surrounded by like-minded religionists, 
from this difficult attainment. Possibly some would 
say there is a place for earnest missionaries who 
have closed minds but who are effective advocates. 
But there must be in each field strong missionaries 
who cannot be so relieved. It is part of their pro- 
fessional qualification. What risk there is must be 
unhesitatingly faced. Missionaries go forth to a 
billion members of ten other faiths and ask them 
to see truths and take on allegiances that they have 
never had before. They outnumber us two to one, 
and include in their number those as high in cul- 
ture, as keen in intellect, as advanced in training as 
ourselves. In aggressively approaching them with 
good news which we earnestly want them to ac- 
cept, it is a pity to have one’s own mind fettered, 
or to be unable sympathetically to emancipate an- 
other’s life. The acceptable missionary to the 
educated classes, especially, makes it plain that he 
has been and still is a searcher for truth; that he 
believes in the truth as revealed in Jesus because 
he has found it to be the supreme truth, experi- 
mentally and practically; and that the Christianity 
he presents is itself scientific in the sense that it 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 107 


welcomes the most careful and exact experiment 
or the test of any seemingly contrary truth. 


Vv 


Secondly, is the assumption that truth is pro- 
gressively revealed to man. If what we call 
Christianity is a completed system in a static uni- 
verse—something once for all delivered to the 
saints—so that it can be carried unchanged to the 
corners of the earth; if any modification of Chris- 
tian ideas or practices by reason of contact with 
other cultures and religions is of necessity de- 
generation; if what we have is a complete and 
finished gift, then there is little to be said for a 
mind being open to fresh truth. But if Christian- 
ity is a living, growing movement at the very 
center of which is the God revealed by the his- 
torical figure of Jesus; if revelation is progressive 
so that it did not end when the latest book of the 
New Testament was written; if Christianity is not 
a static set of doctrines but a dynamic experience; 
if God’s Spirit is indeed abroad among the hearts 
of men, then one must be ready to see good any- 
where, even outside Christianity and in those not 
formally professing Him nor consciously converted 
to Him. 

The world Christian of today, therefore, finds 
he must at the same time maintain both vitality 
of faith and expectancy for fresh incursions of 
truth from God. He stakes his life on fundamental 
revelations and acts in Jesus Christ, and yet 
realizes that his apprehension of the implications 
of these things may be supplemented by the 


108 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


intelligent representatives of other cultures and 
faiths. The significance of Christ is greater 
‘than any one race can exhaust. The world Chris- 
tian knows that he has experienced God in Jesus 
Christ, but with mankind so rich and varied, he 
does not set himself up as the exclusive interpreter 
of Christianity. His Christianity is a growing in- 
terpretation of life with all the possibility of re- 
ceiving fresh contributions from the experience of 
other peoples. His refusal to maintain a closed 
mind is both an acknowledgement that not all that 
is traditionally associated with historical Christian- 
ity will necessarily stand, and an assertion that 
life cannot be lazily ordered as thougy all truth 
had been discovered. 

In this conviction that truth is progressively re- 
vealed we are following the spirit of Jesus. He 
said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but 
ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, 
the Spirit of truth is come, he shall guide you into 
all truth.” He told the religious leaders of His day 
that “new wine must be put in fresh wine skins.” 
Possessed as He was with the power of the all- 
searching, transforming Spirit of God, He said and 
did things in revolutionarily constructive ways. 
He believed that Israel’s faith had come from God, 
but from His life and death came a new religion. 
Certain fundamental facts were complete in Jesus; 
but there are others which have “first the blade, 
then the ear, then the full grain in the ear’”—some 
things come in their own time through a gradual 
and an historical process. Perhaps one reason why 
no new significant theological interpretation has 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 109 


come from the younger churches abroad is that we 
have emphasized the finality of what we take to 
them. There are heights and depths unfathomable 
in God’s plan for His children, and divine ways 
past tracing out. We can have a closed mind and 
miss the mind of Christ for ourselves and others. 

Still a third reason for the position of this chap- 
ter grows out of reverence for individuality. It 
is the conviction that each other person, although 
of different race and culture, may have experiences 
of value. Such experiences should be considered 
exactly on the same basis as are our own. Only 
when each of us gives his best in this spirit can 
richer experience and new truth be found. We 
recognize that this is the process by which the 
common mind grows. Only as the various mem- 
bers of the world family humbly, yet earnestly 
and sincerely, share the best that has come to them, 
will the truer, fuller solution be found. The world 
Christian, therefore, does not present his religion 
dogmatically on authority, but as a matter of 
life experience capable of test. 

Mary Parker Follett, in “The New State,” says: 


I do not go to a meeting merely to give my own 
ideas. If that were all, 1 might write my fellow- 
members a letter. But neither do I go to learn 
other people’s ideas. If that were all, I might ask 
each to write a letter. I go to a committee meet- 
ing in order that all together we may create a 
group idea, an idea which will be better than any 
one of our ideas alone, moreover, which will be 
better than all of our ideas added together. For 
this group idea will not be produced by any process 
_ of addition, but by the interpenetration of us all. 


110 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


Similarly, at the International Missionary Coun- 
cil of 1923, the Bishop of Bombay read a notable 
‘statement with reference to the practicability of 
missionary cooperation in the face of doctrinal 
differences. In it he said: 


A man must come to the Council more desirous 
to learn than to teach, unwilling to believe that he 
brings with him the sole and complete solution of 
any problem, but convinced that what he brings 
will have its effect on the common mind and that 
the council as a whole will be able to put together, 
by the help of God’s spirit, a solution that is truer 
and completer than that which any member could 
have attained outside the Council.“ 


The question we are raising here is as to how 
far these same principles would hold good between 
missionaries and the people among whom they go. 
Shall our missionaries use the same method of 
tolerant expectation with the young Churches and 
with non-Christians that we are here told we 
should use with fellow Christians who differ 
from us? 

Something in Christianity itself impels us not 
only to hear but to seek the sincere testimony of 
those who differ from us. We are used to this 
principle in the social realm, for Jesus associated 
with publicans and sinners. He saw worthfulness 
in those whom others considered wholly unlovely. 
Similarly, I believe some aspect of truth is to be 
found in every sincere and honest man. Just asa 
Christian, because of his reverence for personality, 
should be able to see what is worthy in the par- 

“International Review of Missions, vol. 12, p. 507. 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 111 


ticularly unpromising, so, also, a Christian ought 
to be able to expect and to see some measure of 
truth in those who seem most to disagree. 

Many present-day college students will be pre- 
pared to manifest this attitude of fair-mindedness. 
In a marked way they are getting a new conscience 
—a reluctance to come to a decision unless in the 
discussion the opposing point of view is repre- 
sented; a feeling that it is not right to adopt some- 
thing as a conviction without having opened our- 
selves up to possibly conflicting evidence. With 
the growth of the scientific habit of mind they are 
becoming sensitive to the fault of a one-sided 
search for reasons to uphold something one wants 
to believe. Their studies show them how in primi- 
tive times social standards and customs were 
rigidly fixed and how in relatively recent times 
there developed the conception of progress—prog- 
ress that could be accelerated by fostering change 
as a result of the thinking process. 

Such attitudes are bound to produce young mis- 
sionaries who will introduce the spirit of demo- 
cratic conference rather than of dogmatic assertion 
into their intercourse with thoughtful and rev- 
erent Christians abroad and with members of 
other faiths. Their training deepens not only the 
sense of responsibility which these students feel 
for earnestly contributing their experience and 
point of view, but also leads them to listen to the 
differing experience and point of view of others 
and prepares them for a possible modification and 
growth in their own convictions as the process of 
discussion goes on. It is just possible that only 


112. WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


through such training does one learn to live with 
buoyant vigor of conviction and yet to seek those 
who differ, hearing fully and sympathetically their 
positions. It is difficult to have profound con- 
victions and yet to maintain a fair mind. 

One is not apt to cultivate this type of mind if 
one’s main business is instilling dogma without an 
earnest desire to teach the reasonableness of new 
belief. Just because the missionary has strong 
convictions and wants to share them, he must be 
especially on guard lest this cause him to over- 
look the possibilities for fresh insights. He may 
become too bent on converting others to his faith 
to take an attitude of generous consideration 
toward ideas and institutions that differ radically 
from his own. Every time a convert is baptized a 
missionary has to run the risk that he may think. 


Vi 


Some will say that the position taken in this 
chapter is an exceedingly dangerous one. And so 
it is. For it is possible for appreciativeness to 
degenerate into a weak and flabby eclecticism, 
wherein Christianity is only one of a number of 
rival faiths, and where the best of each is pooled 
to form the world’s ultimate religion. There is 
undoubtedly danger here. We have only to look 
back upon the history of Christianity in the first 
five centuries to see how serious the danger is. 
During that period, in an effort to maintain purity 
of docirine and discipline, Christianity took a most 
exclusive attitude to the other religions of the day. 
In spite of this, certain pagan attitudes and cle- 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 113 


ments entered, particularly in the field of worship, 
in order to make the services attractive to the new 
converts. If this syncretism in doctrine and 
worship took place when Christianity was intensely 
antagonistic to other faiths, it stands to reason 
there is more danger if one approaches other re- 
ligions in a sympathetic appreciative attitude. 
Possibly we can avoid some of the mistakes of the 
first centuries if we consciously recognize the peril. 

Some feel that it is disloyalty to the religion we 
have known from childhood to carry this spirit 
of teachableness over to another land where 
Christianity has been less long established and 
people have been nurtured in a different faith. 
Actually to maintain an open mind as to the 
completeness of everything in Christianity as we 
now understand it, in the face of those who differ, 
gives to many the impression of weakness. But 
there is nothing incompatible between the most 
ardent allegiance to one’s own faith and the cul- 
tivation of that confidence in others and respect 
for them which should characterize each member 
of a group who have met to share the most serious 
problems and deepest convictions of their lives. 
On the other hand may it not be lack of confidence 
in Christ when we do not undergo the discipline 
of attempting to take all the facts into considera- 
tion, or when we hesitate to follow where truth 
seems to lead? Is not a lurking fear sometimes 
back of our unwillingness to open certain religious 
questions to freest and most unhampered discus- 
sion? Conviction with teachableness seems to me 
to be a higher type of loyalty to Christ than that 


114 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


which counts it sacrilege to re-think in open sin- 
cerity the most vital issues of our faith. 

Still another danger in encouraging sympathetic 
appreciation of good wherever found is that we 
may allow our powers of discrimination to be 
blunted. We dare not be so uncritical in our ob- 
servation of facts as to close our eyes to the 
deficiencies, defects, and unsocial results of sys- 
tems, whether our own or others. A proper balance 
between the two attitudes is needed. 

An increasing number of earnest Christians to- 
day love to say with the blind preacher of Scot- 
land, George Matheson, in his prayer: 


Gather us in, Thou Love that fillest all, 
Gather our rival faiths within Thy fold, 
Rend each man’s temple-veil, and bid it fall, 
That we may know that Thou hast been of old; 
Gather us in. 


Gather us in: we worship only Thee; 
In varied names we stretch a common hand; 
In diverse forms a common soul we see; 
In many ships we seek one spirit land; 
Gather us in. 


Each sees one color of Thy rainbow light, 
Each looks upon one tint and calls it heaven; 
Thou art the fullness of our partial sight; 

We are not perfect until we find the seven; 

Gather us in. 


Thine is the mystic life great India craves, 
Thine is the Parsee’s sin-destroying beam, 
Thine is the Buddhist’s rest from tossing waves, 

Thine is the empire of vast China’s dream; 

Gather us in. 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 115 


Some seek a Father in the heavens above, 
Some ask a human image to adore, 
Some crave a spirit vast as life and love; 

Within Thy mansions we have all and more; 

Gather us in. 


Such an expansive, inclusive attitude enlarges 
our sympathies, but it would be muddling thought 
to forget that different world views do make a 
difference. All roads do not lead to Rome. All 
religions do not have the same ethics and the same 
metaphysics. There are great ethical and philo- 
sophical disparities not only between the various 
faitus, but also within the faiths, our own included. 

In the ethical realm, the hope of forward-look- 
ing men and women is that, as a result of fearless 
criticism of each and of every moral standard 
and the constructive work of experimental and 
educational psychology, we shall obtain a body of 
scientific knowledge directly bearing on social 
problems. We believe that Jesus Christ gave us 
the ethical norm for social living and Christians 
have the confidence that science will show that He 
was right. We believe that many of the ethical 
ideals of other faiths are inadequate, and that 
eventually systematized, scientific study will show 
that they cannot stand the test of social results. 
One reason why I am committed to missions is that 
I believe that through Jesus Christ the world has 
been given principles as to the best way of liv- 
ing, that His scale of values is not only incom- 
parably ahead of present practice but is the truest 
revelation of life’s significance, and that other re- 

ligions do not equally meet this practical test. 


116 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


But ethics is not all. No detailed knowledge of 
life in particular makes up for an explanation of 
-life as a whole. Each of us needs a view of the 
whole of life. Through Christ we have caught a 
philosophy of life, a general view of God, of man, 
of their relations, of their purposes and goals, and 
life lived on this basis is abundant, socially 
desirable, and progressive; such as satisfies the 
deepest needs of the spirit for power to live up to 
the ideals recognized as supreme; and such as con- 
forms to the strict discipline of scientifically ob- 
servable facts and meets all the tests of clear, con- 
sistent, logical thinking. I do not believe that the 
general viewpoint or philosophy of other faiths 
will equally stand these tests. Since general view- 
points do make a difference, this is another reason 
why I believe in missions. 

Young students have a right to know where the 
attitude advocated here will lead one. Let me 

give my own testimony. Twenty-six years ago I 
went out as a short-term teacher to one of the col- 
leges of India with no thought of missions as a 
life work. Asa factor in making up my own mind 
as to the urgency of missions, I began to study 
the Bhagavad Gita, that most esteemed of Hindu 
sacred scriptures. In order to see it through 
the warm enthusiasm of one who loved it, I read 
with a Sanskrit Pandit who knew English. Neither 
then nor since have I been able to take all the 
facts into consideration; life decisions can never 
be made on such an inclusive basis; but, on the 
basis of my own study and experience, fairly open- 
minded, and on the ground, there came clear con- 


CONVICTION AND TEACHABLENESS 117 


viction that the most worthwhile investment of my 
life and effort would be to help India to discover 
Jesus Christ. It was plain that India—and the 
whole world—needed not only a better ethic, not 
only a better philosophy of life, but to know the 
old story of what God did for men through Jesus 
Christ, to hear of a life that was lived, of a death 
that He died, of something that was done. Never, 
however, in the later days did I regret having 
sympathetically tried to listen to India’s best. 

As opportunity offered, I still tried as the years 
went on to see the highest glimpses that India had 
caught of God in the Gurukula at Hardwar, at 
Shantiniketan with Tagore, at a Buddhist mon- 
astery in Colombo, and with many a devout and 
earnest seeker after God whom I still can call by 
name. The uniqueness of Jesus and the incom- 
parable riches found in Him stood out with ever 
greater clearness. Quietly the conviction gathered 
overwhelming strength that Jesus Christ is the 
interpreter of the final fact of the universe, the 
One through whom the sacredness and value of 
human life is shown, the Lord of life, and in 
actual fact man’s Savior from sin. It became clear 
that man’s greatest wisdom is to give Him the full 
opportunity with every human being and every 
aspect of organized society. Intelligent, zealous, 
effective cooperation with the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ in bringing heme His world stood out 
as life’s highest aim. With Him incomparably 
supreme what else but strengthened loyalty could 
be the result of such study? 

The teachable mind comes as a result of a 


118 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


genuine respect for human life and of confidence 
in the indwelling Spirit of God. With the utmost 
loyalty to the lordship of Jesus Christ, the teach- 
able mind lets us be receptive to God’s disclosure 
of Himself in human life under any sky. It is 
ever ready to detect better ways of living the 
Christ-like life. Itshows that we accept Hindus 
and Muhammadans and Confucianists as God’s 
children even when they are not aware of the fact. 
It is a humble acknowledgement that we of the 
West have not yet learned how to meet all the 
problems of a modern world, and that we eagerly 
seek with our comrades overseas how to find and 
do His will. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 


eee 


The Older 






Geographical 
Expansion 


task 


missionary 
was interpreted as 
a circular one be- 
ginning at Jerusa- 
lem and extending 
unto the uttermost 
parts of the earth. 

Now, however, 
we are interpreting 
our task in perpen- 
dicular terms, as 

well. It involves 


Emphasis— 







119 


Untit the middle of 
the nineteenth century 
missionary effort was 
occupied with the geo- 
graphical expansion of 
Christianity. China, 
Japan, Africa were 
closed and largely un- 
known continents. Our 









Additiona$ 
Emphasis— 






Christsan 





‘120 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


not merely geographical expansion, but the Chris- 
tian permeation of all phascs of life. Once the call 
was to unoccupied continents. Now the missionary 
call includes also great areas of life and thought 
which are as yet “unoccupied” by the spirit of 
‘Christ. The modern missionary ideal is that His 
spirit shall permeate the whole of life—individual 
and social, national and international. The task 
is immensely greater than when we thought of it 
merely as the proclamation of good news to all 
the world. The “unfinished task” can no longer 
be given merely in terms of Afghanistan and 
Tibet, but also in terms of un-Christianized habits, 
attitudes, and inward urges everywhere. 

In the past we have been in the habit of divid- 
ing humanity into certain compartments. Along 
geographic lines we have used such compartments 
as Africa, South America or the Near East. But 
some aspects of the task of making life on this 
earth Christian cannot be shut up in these com- 
partments. In fact, that which most militates 
against the Kingdom is not only off in China, or 
Japan, or India, but also in America. 

Again, under the heading of religion we group 
people as Hindus, Confucianists, Buddhists, etc. 
Missions meant taking the good news to these dis- 
tant compartments. In fact, many still think of 
the anti-Christ as being off in some mission land, 
or in some non-Christian religion. It is a part of 
this point of view to say that the Muhammadan 
religion is the most dangerous surviving opponent 
of Christianity. As before, however, that which 
most keeps back the Kingdom is not only in 


OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 121 


Muhammadanism, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, but 
also in so-called Christianity. As we try to pic- 
ture Christianity’s most significant struggle we do 
not primarily think of Christ on one side with 
Buddha, Zoroaster, and Confucius on the other. 
Rather do we see arrayed against the Christ stu- 
pendous social forces which are turning the world’s 
life upside down, and which unless confronted by 
the united forces of Christ will ere long make the 
opposition of Confucius and Buddha seem in- 
significant indeed. In fact, in this greater struggle 
Christianity generally finds itself the ally and the 
fulfiller of other faiths, rather than their enemy. 

Missionary study texts have largely taught us to 
think of certain localized evils. As a result of this 
teaching the mention of India brings up at once 
the thought of caste and child widows; China, the 
thought of foot-binding and squeeze; Africa, the 
thought of polygamy and superstition. But there 
are other and greater evils cutting right across all 
peoples, great horizontal strata of life and thought 
which gird the earth. In these do we find the char- 
acteristic struggle of our day. 

There is, for example, the whole subject of in- 
dustrialism. It is sweeping over the world. Evils 
held in check by social legislation in the West are 
often enormously aggravated in countries where 
capitalistic industry is a recent introduction. If 
the Church does not make a systematic effort to 
think out the application of Christianity to this 
problem, countries in the first stages of industrial 
transformation will to that extent discount 
_ Christianity. As one thinks of the extension to the 


122. WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


millions in India, China and Africa of western 
_industrialism in its selfish acquisitive form, one be- 
gins to see what a menace to humanity lies in the 
purely materialistic development of resources. 
Here then is a continent that should be entered. 
Just as Judson and Livingstone and Morrison 
pressed into geographical areas to make Jesus 
known, so we should send men and women into 
the area of social maladjustment to bring His way 
to bear upon the problem. 

There are other great continents where He is 
hardly known—competitive nationalism, race pre]j- 
udice and pride, the ready resort to war, ignorance, 
:overty. In each of these the whole world lives, 
so that the modern call is not primarily in terms 
of a Christian West going to the help of the non- 
Christian continents of the East. Rather is the call 
for the forces of Christian idealism wherever they 
are found to join issue with the forces of selfish- 
ness and cruelty and sin throughout the world. 
The modern Christian enterprise asks us to be- 
hold, runr 1g transversely right across the human 
race, those elements of selfishness and material- 
ism which keep the Kingdom from manifestation. 
The mighty human attitudes and habits which can 
block the realization of a better world cannot help 
but be a concern of missions. Only a religion that 
sets itself to solve these problems can win the 
reverence of mankind. 


II 


One hundred and fifty years ago Africa and 
Japan and China were almost unknown lands to 


OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 123 


us. Their peoples and their problems and the 
ways in which we could help could not be pic- 
tured with exactness. And yet our forefathers 
began one of the most amazing and effective move- 
ments in human history. Carey, the cobbler, stirred 
his generation with “Expect great things from God 
—attempt great things for God.” Henry Martyn, 
in the employ of a trading company, reached India 
and exclaimed, “Now let me burn out for God.” 
Vision, sacrifice, faith, love characterized the noble 
succession of men and women who made the mis- 
sionary movement during its predominantly 
geographic period. 

Can we not do for our day and generation what 
those venturesome God-filled spirits did for 
theirs? Are the continents which we should enter 
in order to release the spirit of Jesus more ill- 
defined and therefore harder to vision? Are gov- 
ernments today any more opposed to Christians 
being dead in earnest for justice and goodwill 
between the nations than in 1706 was a _ political 
officer opposed to the delicate Ziegenbalg’s landing 
at Tranquebar? Are the exploitive capitalistic 
corporations of today stronger or more opposed 
to reformation than was the East Indian Company 
opposed to Carey’s landing at Calcutta? Are any 
of us likely to face harder racial situations than 
did the first Protestant missionary to China? 
There are great pioneering tasks in the applica- 
tion of Christianity to the economic, social, political 
and international aspects of life which call to us 
today. 


124 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


If missionary zeal for occupying areas of mod- 
ern thought and activity for Christ could possess 
our hearts and wills comparable to the mighty 
impulse which fifty years ago sent man after man 
to give his life in Africa this would be a different 
world. There would be a spiritual awakening, 
also, for only as Christianity grapples with con- 
temporary tasks will its vitality, truth, and power 
convince. The one great way to a new faith in 
God and man is to give up the familiar but too 
long accepted geographical boundaries of our task 
and attempt with corporate faith and in Christ’s 
spirit of adventure the humanly impossible for our 
day. There are resources that become available 
only to great outreachings of faith. 

Possibly we need new terminology, for the spirit 
of missions is far larger than societies which take 
that name. We do not want the absence of a 
familiar label to blind us to those great streams 
which, apart from ecclesiastical institutionalism 
and organizational regularity, are helping on the 
Kingdom. The essential characteristic of missions 
does not reside in the society under which it is 
carried on, nor in certain commissioning cere- 
monies of the Church, nor in any particular 
activity that is taken up, but in spirit and in pur- 
pose. The essence of the missionary spirit is the 
desire to do good to all men as we have the 
opportunity, so that every form or type of 
service which ministers to man’s well-being can 
on principle be included in the missionary move- 
ment. 


OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 125 


Iil 


There are many signs that a reinterpretation of 
the missionary movement is at hand. Perhaps it 
is not too much to say that it must come if the 
present student generation is to be won to what 
has been so great an enterprise. The oncoming 
generation is almost on tip-toe to give itself with 
abandon to heroic service. We have the option 
of attempting to gear this groping optimism and 
idealism up to our familiar missionary program, 
or of expanding the program to enlist fresh tides 
of the Christ-life surging into the lives of men. 

One gets the impression that students vaguely 
sense the inevitableness of this transition, and are 
grasping with increasing clearness the new insight 
—that if the Christian witness is to be borne effec- 
tively, it must express itself in relation to the great 
moral issues affecting the social and national life 
of our day. Both in Britain and America they 
are uniting their study of missionary problems 
with home social problems and international prob- 
lems as they did not do even two years ago. No 
missionary program will enlist their interest which 
centers on the “occupation” of far-off continents 
and leaves out of consideration the major con- 
cerns affecting our whole generation. Let us chal- 
lenge the oncoming youth with the immensely 
difficult and (to some) apparently impossible task 
that confronts this generation. 

Symptomic of this change was the widened scope 
of the program of the last Student Volunteer 
Quadrennial Convention where matters concern- 


126 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


ing “the evangelization of the world in this gen- 
eration” shared attention with such themes as 
racial relations, industrial democracy, social re- 
construction, and those international problems 
which lead to war. It cannot be said that there is 
general approval among the leaders that such 
present-day basic human problems should be in- 
cluded as an integral part of the program of a 
foreign missionary convention. But.there is un- 
doubtedly a strong body of eager thinkers who 
whole-heartedly desire that the concept of the 
word “missionary” should include an intimate re- 
lationship to the great moral and Christian issues 
which now confront all peoples regardless of 
national lines. There are certainly student centers 
where those missionary leaders who wish to hold 
the interest of students must prove to them that 
they know world problems and can speak the 
language of international discussion. With this 
constituency missions will suffer if one man pre- 
sents “world problems” and another presents 
“missions.” 

The tendency, among students, to give up think- 
ing of the world as made up of geographic com- 
partments, is still further seen in a restlessness 
over the distinction between home and foreign 
missions. Unity of the work throughout the world 
seems to many a more significant thing than any 
geographically differentiating aspects of the mis- 
sionary vocation. Hence, many prefer that calls 
to service should be in terms of the greatest need 
for the whole world, for God’s plan for the indi- 
vidual in relation to His whole Kingdom, rather 


OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 127 


than for foreign missions as a geographically dif- 
ferentiated area. Wireless, the long distance tele- 
phone, and the aeroplane will soon make com- 
munication with the more distant field as quick 
as now with the nearest home-mission station. 
What need then, they say, for an administrative 
distinction? The whole world is the mission field; 
and if a person serves at all he serves in the mis- 
sion field. The significant difference is that the 
opportunities in some places are more strategic 
than at others, or the needs are greater, or the 
Christian communities are younger and less ex- 
perienced or equipped. The separate appeal for a 
separate destination is in danger of making the 
decision as to type and place of vocation seem 
fundamental rather than whether the Christian 
ideal shall absolutely guide at every stage. Doubt- 
less from an administrative standpoint most 
Churches will continue to make a distinction be- 
tween home and foreign missions, for this is an age 
of specialization.. But in the reorientation of our 
missionary policy this restlessness at a distinction 
in thought between mission lands and non-mission 
lands must be taken into consideration. 
Significant of this new conception of missions is 
the fact that within a twelvemonth four books? 
on race have appeared from distinctly mission 
sources—one as part of the preparation for the 
recent Student Volunteer Quadrennial at Indian- 


*“Racial Relations and the Christian Ideal”; Basil Mat- 
thews, “The Clash of Color’; Oldham, J. H., “Christianity 
and the Race Problem”; Speer, R. E., “Race and Race 
Relations.” 


128 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


apolis, a second from one of the most versatile 
and facile interpreters of modern missions, and a 
major volume from each of the two foremost mis- 
sionary leaders of Great Britain and America. The 
new conditions of a modern shrunken world have 
made racial antipathies a major issue. It seems 
plain that those who are most possessed by the 
missionary spirit do not propose abandoning this 
dark continent in human relationships to be in- 
terpreted by Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant. 


IV 


Missionary organizations now in existence are 
unquestionably feeling out toward the larger serv- 
ice. Something that might become a transition to 
an oncoming stage of missions is already under 
way. 

In this more specifically missionary realm, 
a most significant fact is the increasing develop- 
ment since 1910 of strong national and _ inter- 
national organizations, enabling the far flung 
enterprise of missions to speak authoritatively 
with a single voice, and making possible new and 
powerful means for embodying international 
goodwill. 

Probably few supporters of missions are aware 
of the international services being rendered by the 
top coordinating missionary body in the United 
States—the Foreign Missions Conference of North 
America—through its subcommittee on Missions 
and Governments. Through its action Dr. James 
L. Barton was sent to attend the Premiers’ Confer- 


/ 


OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 129 


ence in London in order to bring to the attention 
of the representatives of the governments con- 
cerned the best interests of the Near East. The 
same Board Secretary was sent to the Lausanne 
Conference, again in behalf of the Near East, as 
an “observer” technically so-called. Missionary 
organizations are large enough and influential 
enough to obtain a hearing, directly or indirectly, 
at many an international conference. 

When proposals looking toward the reintroduc- 
tion of opium into China were made, this sub- 
committee Joined with other bodies in bringing 
these plans to the attention of the various Govern- 
ments in the West and of the missionaries on the 
field, in order that the utmost possible endeavor 
might be made to combat the restoration of the 


' opium traffic. In 1922 the secretary of the Foreign 


Missions Conference participated in an important 
conference in London at which the international 
aspects of the opium traffic were considered. Ac- 
tion was taken also when, as a result of prohibition 
legislation in the United States, it was proposed to 
transfer breweries to lands in which missions work. 
Because narcotic drugs are so often produced in 
mission areas, and because people in China, India, 
and other lands suffer so greatly from the misuse 
of these drugs, missionary societies are deeply 
interested in limiting their production and use to 
medicinal and scientific purposes. Their in- 
fluence has been brought to bear upon the Con- 
gress of the United States to stimulate action which 
will make possible the continued participation of 


130 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS © 


American delegates in international conferences 
dealing with these evils. 

.. The Foreign Missions Conference nominated two 
of a committee of five appointed to administer a 
fund of approximately a million dollars to be ex- 
pended in China for the prevention of future 
famines. : 

It is the custom of the Committee on Missions 
and Governments to take advantage of opportuni- 
ties to bring officials and other representatives of 
foreign governments into contact with officers and 
members of mission boards. Such social confer- 
ences have been arranged, for example, with the 
representatives of the Educational Commission, 
sent from the Province of Kiangsu, China, to the 
United States, with Minister Schurman before he 
sailed for China, and with a delegation of busi- 
ness men from Japan. 

A -deputation, representing foreign mission 
boards, was sent to confer with the Secretary of 
State at Washington in order to urge the appoint- 
ment of representative citizens of character and 
ability to consular and diplomatic positions. 

The similar coérdinating missionary body in 
Britain led a quiet but very effective movement 
to safeguard labor conditions in Africa. Govern- 
ment regulations which seriously endangered the 
independence of the laborer had been issued. As 
a result of this action a statement was issued mak- 
ing clear and unambiguous the disinterested and 
impartial position of officers of government in re- 
gard to both employees of labor and native 
laborers. 





OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 131 


As a result of a carefully prepared memorandum 
sent to the Colonial Office by the British mis- 
sionary societies, a conference attended by five 
governors was held on education in Africa. The 
result was that, while heretofore Government 
has done little toward the education of Africa, it 
did appoint: an Advisory Committee on Native 
Education in British Tropical African Dependen- 
cies, which has initiated new and constructive 
measures. Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, who has been 
chairman of two educational commissions to 
Africa, speaks of this step as probably the most 
significant movement for education in Africa in 
many years. The Advisory Committee hopes “to 
explore the experience of the world as to what is 
the best and most helpful form and type of educa- 
tion that we can give to the Africans for the pur- 
pose of giving light to New Africa.” Mr. J. H. 
Oldham, Secretary of the International Missionary 
Council, was asked to serve on this committee. His 
close touch with missionary agencies in America, 
Great Britain, and the European continent, and his 
study of British colonial activities, especially those 
concerned with race, education and the welfare of 
the people, have prepared him to render im- 
portant service on this committee. 

Together the missionary societies of Great Bri- 
tain and America have sent educational commis- 
sions to India, to China and to Africa, with the 
primary purpose of discovering how the Christian 
forces of the West can best contribute to the solu- 
tion of the educational problems of these lands. 


132. WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


They worked together, also, in connection with 
the drafting of the mandates of the League of 
Nations which undoubtedly expressed a new spirit 
on the part of nations and their governments in 
relation to colonies that may come under their 
control. The clauses in the mandates of the 
League which guarantee religious liberty and as- 
sure missionary freedom were written into those 
mandates in the first place through the coopera- 
tive efforts of the missionary societies of Great 
Britain and America working through the Inter- 
national Missionary Council. At the meeting of 
the Council of the League of Nations in 1922 Lord 
Balfour explained that the final wording in the 
clauses in the “A” and “B” mandates was a word- 
ing written by the Department of State at Wash- 
ington into its treaty with Japan in regard to the 
island of Yap, an action taken by the Department 
of State in response to recommendations made by a 
committee of the Foreign Missions Conference of 
North America.’ 

The International Missionary Council stands for 
the protection of the great common rights of 
humanity. One of its secretaries took a most 
active part in the victorious struggle to prevent 
the establishment of forced labor in British East 
Africa, referred to above. We are told that they 
are facing more serious situations in Portuguese 
Africa, and that the time is rapidly approaching 
when mission forces will have to make a united 


?Warnshuis, Dr. A. L., Report of the Foreign Missions 
Conference of North America, 1923, p. 75. 


OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 133 


and determined protest against the conditions 
maintained there.® 

The same type of action is being encouraged on 
the part of proper bodies on the field. The mis- 
sionary forces in China, in Japan, and in India 
have joined with the Churches in forming what 
are called National Christian Councils. One minor 
object in equipping these Councils with a staff of 
full-time secretaries is that they may be able to 
collect the facts and consider the principles on the 
basis of which in the name of the whole Christian 
movement may be given the Christian view con- 
concerning great public questions in which right 
and wrong are at issue. 

The National Christian Council of India, meet- 
ing in 1920, at a time when men’s minds were 
deeply moved and passions were excited to a 
dangerous degree, placed on record their convic- 
tion that any Christian view of the situation in the 
world at large at that time, and in India in 
particular, must take account of certain principles, 
eight of which they proceeded to formulate.* This 
Council has long been at work on a new draft for 
a new Indian Christian Marriage Act, and on a 
Legal Hand Book. 

The National Christian Council of China has as 
one of its definite objects the “progressive study 
of the mind and will of God in relation to the ful- 
filling cf His purpose in China.” The National 
Christian Conference in Shanghai, 1922, pledged 


* Ibid., 1924, p. 71. 


*Proceedings of the National Missionary Council, Cal- 
cutta, Nov. 11-16, 1920, p. 30. 


134 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


the Christian Church to direct responsibility for 
better labor standards in Chinese industry. The 
Council’s Committee on the Church and Industrial 
and Economic Problems was asked to carry out 
the intent of this pledge. Problems of child labor, 
industrial hygiene, living wage, and social legisla- 
tion are being taken up. The Council has had, 
also, a committee on the Social Application of 
Christianity, later called Social and Moral Wel- 
fare Committee. Two of the four subjects chosen 
' for study during 1923-1924 by China’s National 
Christian Council were the Christian approach to 
the industrialization of China and China’s inter- 
national expression. 

We will make no attempt here to review the 
more familiar social work carried on by the 
regular mission societies—colleges of agriculture 
and forestry, schools of industry and engineering, 
seri-culture and institutional churches, cooperative 
credit socicties, and the study of erosion and floods 
along the Yellow River. Nothing pertaining 
to human welfare and achievable with available 
resources has been considered outside the scope 
of missionary effort. Of the 353 international 
organizations now in existence not one can 
compare with the missionary movement for 
long-continued, persistent world service. There 
has been a constant tendency to enlarge the 
purpose of the missionary enterprise. Conspicuous 
and convincing expressions of the spirit of friendly 
helpfulness and of the ability to render worth- 
while service have been given in all parts of the 
world. 





OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 135 


The illustrations given in this section will help 
us to see how our present missionary organizations, 
although still dominated by the attitudes and 
patterns of the earlier geographic period, recog- 
nize that the larger needs must be met. In fact, 
if they were blind to the new continents that have 
been here suggested, people would question their 
qualifications for entering the old for Christ. 


Vv 


In the reinterpretation of missions that is going 
on certain things will be kept in mind. There is 
certainly urgency in the need for Christians to 
enter with greater power the great transverse areas 
of human activity today. But it would be a 
tremendous step backwards if we lost the sharp 
edge of the present emphasis on making Jesus 
Christ known to all mankind. The problem of 
individual redemption still stands as one of the 
basic problems in the recovery of the world. There 
are, thank God, men and women whose hearts 
will never be at rest as long as there are people 
who have not heard of Him. It is as vital as ever, 
therefore, to take Christ’s love to everybody every- 
where. We are simply more consciously and 
aggressively yearning to permeate with His spirit 
every relationship in every aspect of life. The 
gospel is to be taken not only to the whole world 
but also to the whole of life. But do we possess the 
spiritual vitality to do both these things? Is there 
not a very great danger lest modern missions sub- 
stitute social ministrations for personal redemp- 


136 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


tion, instead of letting them supplement one 
another? 

Even from the older standpoint, however, it is an 
~ arresting fact that there are psychological obstacles 
to reaching another people that may be as balking 
as geographical obstacles were in the days of 
Morrison or Livingstone. Such things as_ the 
Amritsar Tragedy, or the way in which the United 
States Senate went about changing the conditions 
for Japanese immigration may close mental doors 
as effectually as ever ports were closed. It is short 
sighted for us to send missionaries for the geo- 
graphical occupation of continents, and to leave 
great areas of human thought and _ activity un- 
evangelized. 

Secondly, we have learned that it is only through 
steady, close, continuous, constructive study that 
Christian solutions can be worked out for the kinds 
of problems we are facing. Loyal to the scientific © 
spirit of our age, the facts would have first to be 
assembled and then made known. This must be 
done on a scale rarely attempted by missionary 
societies of the present denominational type. This 
has been recognized in the establishment of the 
Institute of Social and Religious Research with 
a large annual budget. We see the same careful 
processes of exhaustive surveys, thorough expert 
consideration, follow-through, and checking up in 
the Rockefeller Boards, such as the Chinese 
Medical Board, or the Health Board. Something 
no less thorough will be needed when Christians 
take up in earnest the task of studying, locating, 


OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 137 


and eradicating the social, national and inter- 
national sins of our day. 

One of the essential conditions of success in 
problems so difficult and complex (aside from the 
prayerful appropriation of the limitless resources 
of God) would be the careful organization of 
research on the basis of which the Christian way 
of life might be determined in any given situation. 
For the application of Christian principles to 
complex conditions is difficult, and only harm is 
done where the authority of the Christian name 
is applied to ill-considered and _ unscientific 
solutions. In the realm of international relations 
proposals, such as the Permanent Court of Inter- 
national Justice, the League of Nations, or an 
international treaty to outlaw war, not only have 
to be originated but they have to be studied, 
appraised and acted upon. World Christians are 
called to study relentlessly the implications of 
Christian principles for each problem. Students, 
therefore, must be raised up of such character and 
knowledge that they will be able to grapple with 
the problems which must be solved if we are to 
get a better world. 

Another condition of success will be the 
Systematic development of a Christian public 
opinion. On the basis of data impartially gathered 
by research, people can be helped to formulate 
their Christian ethic on vital social, economic, and 
political issues: All can help to create an at- 
mosphere which will go far toward making 
possible decisions that are wise and right. 


138 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


Still another condition of success will be the 
training of Christian leaders for those professions 
or those services, whether public or private, which 
most materially affect the evolution of the nation’s 
social, industrial and political life, and which 
exert the greatest influence on public opinion.® 

We may well remember that it is not only in 
Britain and America that men should be able to 
consecrate their brains to a Christian world order. 
There must be groups of such thinkers in every 
land. Here Christian missions have a great oppor- 
tunity, since they have so large a place in the 
education of the youth of these peoples. The very 
fact that this education is Christian ought to help 
them to concentrate on the primary conflict—not 
East versus West, not Christianity versus some 
non-Christian religion, but right versus wrong in 
the concrete relations of industry, race and 
politics. Christian missions may well incorporate 
in their aim that there shall be in each nation a 
group yearning to discover and to make articulate 
the Christian Gospel for national and international 
life. They may well undertake to raise up a 
constituency in each land who will be convinced 
that the peace which all the world so woefully 
needs is the fruit not of balanced self-interest but 
of mutual respect, love, and passion for service. 
Into the whole developing fabric of the Church on 
the field should be woven principles of Christian 
internationalism and interracialism. 


*“Christian Education in China,” p. 220. 





OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 139 


VI 


Is it wise for denominationally organized mis- 
sionary societies to attempt a radical readjustment 
of their missionary policies so as to give as much 
attention to occupying for Christ great areas of 
human thought and aetivity, as to seeking in- 
dividual converts in other hemispheres? Or shall 
they concentrate on the specific task of making 
Jesus known in the more usual evangelistic sense? 
Shall they attempt to “send” people into whatever 
area of thought or world that seems most needy, 
or shall they acknowledge that they can cover but 
a sector of the missionary outreach in the larger 
sense, and hence share with other agencies of the 
Church, or with extra-Church organizations, the 
glory and privilege of what in the truest sense can 
be called missionary service? Are the $44,000,000 
annually given for missions in the United States 
and Canada most wisely spent through 236 
separate societies? Or will nothing less than an 
interdenominational and international agency 
have the outlook for the larger work? 

No one knows the answer to these questions, nor 
can anticipate all the adjustments that would be 
involved in connecting the thought of missions 
with a greatly broadened scope. We are living in 
a time when earnest people are doing a great deal 
of rethinking and restating. A remarkable series 
of national and international conferences is 
evidence of a widespread search for a new way. 
C.0.P.E.C. has just been held. The Universal 
Christian Conference on Life and Work will be 


140 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


held in Stockholm in 1925; The World Conference 
on Faith and Order, in Europe or Jerusalem, in 
1927; The National Conference on the Christian 
Way of Life, in America, possibly in 1926. Among 
a score of Christian international organizations 
Jet us just recall a few—The Church Peace Union, 
The World Alliance for International Friendship 
throughout the Churches, The International Fed- 
eration of Christian Women, The International 
Congress of Religious Liberals, the Commission 
on International Justice and Goodwill. Manifestly 
the courageous assumption of the newer and 
larger obligations of making Jesus known in a 
modern world is no small task. Conscious of our 
weakness we turn to God who promised, “Behold, 
I will do a new thing.” 

Manifestly there are forces outside the Church 
through which God is working. If our denomi- 
national societies remain unchanged, they will 
undoubtedly continue to be important factors in 
the missionary enterprise; but the enterprise it- 
self will be far larger than the societies. Chris- 
tians in many walks of life will become aware that 
as the Father sent Christ into the world, even so 
has He sent them. And when they stop working 
for themselves and devote themselves to God’s 
purpose for the world they are missionaries and 
should be recognized as such. 

In the meantime all who are loyal to the mission- 
ary enterprise will take care not to be so busy 
getting more men and more money for the work 
which is being done now, that they will not have 
time to catch God’s leading in new ways. They 


OCCUPATION OF NEW CONTINENTS 141 


will sympathetically recognize that the extent of 
the work that can be done by our present boards 
cannot be determined on any a priori basis, since 
account must be taken of available resources, both 
human and financial. Furthermore our present 
coordinating national-and international societies 
have no independent incomes of their own, and 
hence must not act so fast as to lose the confidence 
of any large portion of their constituency. Re- 
sponsible board officers dare not lightly experi- 
ment with their organizations, for they must raise 
millions of dollars each year or else cripple num- 
berless institutions in all parts of the world and 
fail thousands of men and women who have gone 
forth trusting to them for support. 

We do not have to answer all the questions 
raised in this chapter now. But we are living in a 
rapidly changing world; new forces are at work; 
and world-wide efforts at readjustment are being 
made. This chapter may help to give that back- 
ground against which we can attempt the readjust- 
ments that most concern us as each concrete 
decision comes before us. Along this road the 
missionary enterprise will retain that challenge to 
great adventure which characterized the geo- 
graphic period. 


CHAPTER VIII 
FACING THE HANDICAP OF A DIVIDED CHURCH 


WE have been considering a natural extension 
of the missionary enterprise—the vast unoccupied 
areas of thought and activity into which men and 
women should be sent to make Christ known. 
Plainly such problems are too vast for any one 
denomination. 


I 


But even in the task to which the Church has 
already set itself—the older form of the missionary 
enterprise—we have to face a mighty handicap in a 
divided Church. The need for adjustment becomes 
glaring when once we see ourselves propagating 
division abroad with divided strategy and com- 
petitive equipment. Even where there is little 
overlapping territorially, it is inevitable that work 
should develop out of balance under this system. 
_ No unified administration of common resources in 
men and money would have sanctioned the pres- 
ent distribution of schools and colleges, or the 
present relative neglect of Christian literature, or 
inefficiency at a dozen other places. We are pour- 
ing annually a series of parallel streams of man- 
and money-power into the mission fields. ‘rhe 
high intent is acknowledged. But no unpreju- 

142 


FACING A DIVIDED CHURCH 143 


diced person can fail to see that if the streams 
were combined on reaching a given country and 
were redistributed under unified control the 
Christian movement would be immensely more ef- 
fective. As long as policies are planned separately 
by scores of independent societies defects in 
administration are inevitable. Long-continued 
familiarity with this situation has dulled our sense 
of fitness. Otherwise we would be shocked at the 
sight of hundreds of separate agencies going forth 
to evangelize the world. ; 

To take one specific situation, we may note that 
there are sixteen Christian colleges in China. 
They were built up when, on the one hand, com- 
munication was difficult and there was some ex- 
cuse for multiplying local institutions of higher 
grade. But on the other hand, one contributing 
cause was that they were founded in a period 
when there was great emphasis on denominations, 
and when the foreign mission rather than the Chi- 
nese Church was centric. The recent Commission 
on Education in China stands four-square against 
a continuation of this enlarged and competitive 
system. 


i 


Institutions, missions, and denominations seem 
to find it hard to manifest as organizations the 
quality of self-sacrifice even unto death that has 
marked the individual missionary from the be- 
ginning. Consecration on an institutional scale is 
needed, for wherever Christianity becomes vocal 
abroad the leaders say they do not want our de- 


144 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


nominationalism. A discussion in the National 
Christian Council of India, in 1923, brought to 
‘light a wide-spread impatiencé, almost a resent- 
ment, at the sectarian divisions which Christian 
missions have transplanted from the West into 
the Indian Church. As far as India is concerned, 
her leaders say that these distinctions are mean- 
ingless, a burden grievous to be borne. 

Commission II of China’s National Christian 
Conference, 1922, says that “difficulty will be found 
in the defense of foreign denominationalism which, 
in some measure, however slight, diverts the atten- 
tion of the Chinese Church from the essential ele- 
ments of Christianity,’ and Commission V says 
that it would “urge the importance of all Chris- 
tians getting beyond those denominational predi- 
lections which have been introduced to China along 
with Christianity.” 

The significance of these statements lies in the 
fact that they represent the highest authoritative 
Christian bodies in two great mission fields. In 
the nineteenth century the Gospel reached China, 
India, and Japan from Palestine via England and 
America, so that our denominationalism traveled 
with it. National leaders are insisting that the 
twentieth century shall see that Gospel acclimated 
without some of our western conceptions of it. 
They are calling upon us to make the reality of 
our oneness in Christ as obvious as at present is 
our scct-mindedness. 

It is plain that missions of the future simply 
must find a way of co6dperative approach that will 
not offend the awakened consciousness of intelli- 


FACING A DIVIDED CHURCH 145 


gent citizens of other lands. For they cannot see 
that any denominational line in Protestantism co- 
incides with a live issue in their lives. When talk- 
ing frankly Christian national leaders abroad tell 
us that the impression often given is that a mis- 
sionary’s denomination has sent him out to work 
for its extension rather than for the development 
of Christianity itself. Instead of unquestionably 
serving the needs of China or India or South 
America, we ofttimes seem to be serving the ends 
of sectarian ecclesiasticism, and to be perpetuating 
divisions created for reasons which long ago 
ceased to be in force. 

There is danger in postponing action. For we 
may so indoctrinate the young Churches abroad 
with the spirit of denominationalism that they will 
not want to give it up. An American society re- 
cently sent a deputation to Japan to suggest the 
union of Japanese Christians connected with this 
society and Christians of another denomination. 
The boards concerned were ready, the missionaries 
were ready, but the Japanese did not want to take 
the step. In fact, in Japan, unlike China, western 
denominationalism seems to have become accli- 
mated. In Mexico, also, we have for fifty years 
been in the business of making denominational- 
ists, so that when the time seemed ripe for making - 
a national Church it was not the missionaries who 
opposed the measures, but the Mexican Protestant 
Christians. Similarly it is said that in South India 
(in spite of the existence of the South India United 
Church) many Indian Christians are more anxious 
to preserve the distinctive existence of their de- 


146 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


nominations than are the missionaries. Perhaps 
the reason may be that in the South the Christian 
communities have been longer organized and 
developed, and hence there has been more oppor- 
tunity for our western divisions to become stereo- 
typed, and for the spirit of disunion to become 
naturalized and endemic. 


iil 


Let us look at this question from the standpoint 
of nationals. The Chinese, for instance, behold 
a recently made map of the missionary occupation 
of their land, in which it is shown with graphic 
exactness that 74 per cent of China’s territory has 
been partitioned into 200 spheres of denomina- 
tional influence. Different churches and missions 
have staked out areas in which they may propa- 
gate their own type of institutions. Like their 
political counterparts these spheres of influence 
were not primarily made for China’s good, but to 
make it unnecessary for outsiders to fight over 
conflicting interests. A patriotic Chinese asks why 
a family in a given city must be Methodist or Pres- 
byterian because the policy of foreign groups has 
recognized this area as the exclusive preserve of a 
particular denomination or society. China will 
no more submit to a partitioning of her Church 
among western denominations than a partition- 
ment of her territory among western nations. If 
we pause, we can catch in imagination the sense 
almost of despair that comes to the Chinese as 
they seek to erect on the foundations we have laid 


FACING A DIVIDED CHURCH 147 


a Church that shall be truly Chinese as well as 
truly Christian. 

In 1915 the missionaries of Mexico, unable to 
continue their labors in that’ country for a time, 
met in conference in Cincinnati with representa- 
tives of the boards concerned, and a very states- 
manlike re-division of Mexico was made. Real 
denominational sacrifice was manifested. Terri- 
tory that had long been Methodist or Baptist or 
Presbyterian was given up, and the equipment and 
converts were turned over to another society, in 
order that the work of each might be more uni- 
fied. Fine as this was from the standpoint of 
foreign bodies sitting at Cincinnati, how does it 
appear to Mexicans? Can you put yourself in 
their place, and imagine how we would like our 
whole Church connections to be changed by a set 
of independent societies meeting in Paris or 
Peking? It is from this angle that our divisions 
and rivalries seem not only unfortunate, but crim- 
inal, when arbitrarily imposed on other people. 
This is an age which is manifesting a deep longing 
for a union of the Christian forces. 

A little imagination will enable us to see that 
denominationalism presents a very different prob- 
lem to the receiving country than to the sending 
country. Conscious of their own generous impulses 
and confident of the value of their distinctive 
message the sending sects do not feel the need to 
give much consideration to their rivals. Not so 
with the receiving lands. If threescore forms of 
Christianity come to them, of necessity the problem 


148 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


is forced on them to consider which is best. Each 
denomination has its peculiar temperament, 
special policy, or emphasis in teaching. This, so 
one of the foremost Chinese Christian leaders tells 
us, has confused the minds of the simple believers 
of the Orient. Ethically we may well consider 
whether it is right for us to go ahead unconcern- 
edly with a divided, competitive approach which 
forces on them our problem of disunion. Ought 
not the sending societies, also, to concern them- 
selves more seriously at their source with this 
problem in some definite and aggressive way, and 
not leave it all to the immature native Churches? 
We are supposed to have the more mature Chris- 
tian experience. But are the sending Christians 
of the West aggressively grappling with this 
problem? 

The demand from abroad, however, cuts deeper 
than denominationalism. In 1923, a conference 
on theological education was held in China. All 
shades of western theological thought were repre- 
sented. A friend writing about this conference 
said: “The net amount of constructive plans and 
resolutions was not great, but it may be regarded 
as a very real accomplishment to have assembled 
that group representing such divergent views, and 
to have their representatives look into each other’s 
faces, hear each other’s voices, and to eat, sing, 
and pray together.” What a consummation this, 
on the part of ambassadors sent forth by western 
Churches to make Jesus Christ known to China— 
the triumph of having eaten, sung, and prayed 


FACING A DIVIDED CHURCH 149 


together! The Chinese delegates, a majority, were 
impressed as never before with the way in which 
theological controversy blocks the progress of the 
Christian enterprise. Is it any wonder that one of 
them publicly confessed his conviction that if the 
atmosphere must be one of such suspicion the 
time had come when continued control by mis- 
sionaries is simply delaying the greater progress 
of the Kingdom of God in China? 

Let us not mistake the point in this illustration. 
It is not meant as a condemnation of these mis- 
sionaries in China, but of a western Church which 
brought them up in an atmosphere that made an 
over-emphasis on doctrines seem normal. Would 
that western Christians could catch the perspective 
that comes from actual contact with other relig- 
ions—from seeing human folk of many lands as 
they face life’s present and life’s future with the 
religion they now have. Here are the Vedantists 
of India who repudiate all personality in God, and 
who confidently claim that you can make no single 
affirmation of their Absolute, except that it is not 
this or that. Here are the Muhammadans, with 
whom we have much in common, but whose 
God is a far-off transcendent potentate before 
whom Moslem foreheads touch the dust five times 
a day. There are Buddhists, Confucianists, and 
Zoroastrians. Faced with such differences, it 
would be supposed that all those who find, in 
Jesus, God manifest in the flesh, would be able to 
lay aside minor differences for the sake of most 
effectively sharing our good news. 


150 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


IV 


Most missionaries would repudiate the idea that 
they go forth to reproduce and perpetuate in lands 
afar the ecclestiastical and doctrinal differences 
that have been the cause of so much strife in our 
home churches. They realize that distinctions 
which have meant much to us in the past may have 
no meaning to Oriental and African Christians. 

Very few people at home realize the extent to 
which active codperation abroad is now carried. 
Ten out of the thirteen schools classified as “theo- 
logical seminaries” in the China Survey are union 
schools—a situation without parallel in any other 
part of the world. Almost every year sees the 
inauguration of some new scheme for a “union” 
institution. There are seventy union educational 
institutions in China alone. 

Churches belonging to the same denominational 
family have in many areas come together. Fur- 
thermore, Churches of closely allied systems of 
government have in a few cases come together. 
The outstanding example is the “South India 
United Church” which is made up of the Presby- 
terian and Congregational churches founded by 
the United Free Church of Scotland, the Reformed 
Church in America, the London Missionary 
Society, and the American Board of Commission- 


*For example the churches that have resulted from the 
missionary work of five Presbyterian and Reformed 
Churches are united in the “Church of Christ” in Japan. 
The Methodist Church in Japan is a union of the churches 
established by the Methodists of the United States, North 
and South, and of Canada as well. Similar movements 
are found in Korea, China, India, Brazil, and Mexico. 


FACING A DIVIDED CHURCH 151 


ers for Foreign Missions. A still more difficult 
kind of union is being attempted in several areas 
where Churches that differ not only in forms of 
government but also in their doctrines relating 
to the sacraments and the Christian ministry are 
planning to unite.’ 

A striking instance of triumphing over denom- 
inationalism is found in the work at Santo 
Domingo where four boards pool their resources 
for the whole area instead of agreeing to comity 
ona geographical basis. They thus make a unified 
approach so that converts are admitted into the 
evangelical church and hear nothing of the sec- 
tarian divisions back of the work. A similar 
development exists in Iraq where five denomina- 
tions work through a unified board. Twenty-eight 
missionary societies are represented on the Com- 
mittee of Cooperation in Latin America. In 
Leyden, Holland, four large societies have 
combined their secretarial staffs in a common 
Missionary Bureau. Larger evidences of the desire 
to overcome the handicap of sectarianism in 
mission activities are seen in the national coor- 
dinating organizations found not only in various 
western lands but in China, Japan, India, and in 
Western Asia and Northern Africa. Especially 
since 1910 have such organizations developed with 
budgets and staffs of whole-time officers. 

*Viz., the South India United Church and the Anglican 
Church, and in Kenya Colony in East Africa the Kikuya 
Alliance of Missionary Societies which includes mission- 
aries of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), the 


Church Missionary Society (Anglican), the African In- 
land Mission (undenominational) and others. 


152. WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


As a matter of fact, more has been achieved 
in Asia and in Latin America in reuniting the 
Churches than in North America or Europe. 
The members of these new Churches, surrounded 
by vast non-Christian populations, feel their essen- 
tial unity much more than we do. Here in Amer- 
ica, confronted as we are with the task of bringing 
the Christ-attitude into the problems of race and 
industry, we should feel a similar necessity to put 
first things first. We western Christians firmly 
believe that Christ is the hope of the race, and that 
this has been demonstrated by the transformations 
wrought in individual life and in the structure of 
society wherever He has been accepted and His 
principles have been courageously acted upon. 
And yet we allow our sectarian differences to 
endanger the sharing of our Savior. Should 
we not let the words of a brilliant Chinese, as 
spoken for the Church in China, affect our poli- 
cies: “We agree to differ, we resolve to love, we 
unite to serve”? 

But we have not done enough. It is evident that 
an unmistakable demand from abroad comes to 
western Christians. They are asked to get beyond 
denominational rivalry and disunion, or at least 
to cease to set up sectarian division on the field. 
If thirty Presbyterian Chinese move into a Luth- 
eran area, are western Lutherans to encourage the 
Church of that area to insist that the newcomers 
submit to Lutheran discipline? If certain Baptist 
Chinese move into a Disciple area (as occurred 
recently) are we going to encourage the Chinese 
Church of that area to recognize that their new 


FACING A DIVIDED CHURCH 153 


friends have the essentials, or shall we threaten 
cessation of financial support if they do not make 
the newcomers conform in what most would call 
unessentials. Will the supporters of missions con- 
tinue to support Christian work even if it is not 
called by their sectarian name? Will denomina- 
tions and institutions manifest the degree of self- 
sacrifice that has characterized individual mission- 
aries in the past? The way in which such 
questions are answered and the extent to which we 
recognize the profound necessity of inter-mission 
and inter-denominational policy will do much to 
make or mar the work of foreign missions during 
the next generation. 

Some say that church members need no educa- 
tion in this element of reconstruction in modern 
missions—that the trouble comes from further up. 
Certain it is, however, that there is evidence that 
an ever-growing number of young minds are 
becoming increasingly impatient with divisive 
forces in western Christianity and are looking for 
a federation in action which will make possible 
the freest possible assistance in building up in 
each land a Church with such organization and 
practice as shall be consonant with the genius of 
that nation. - 


CHAPTER IX 
yeniees WAY TO NATIONALS 
I 


Most missionaries would assent to the proposi- 
tion that the vigor, spontaneity, and living power 
of the Church in any land are matters of abso- 
lutely incalculable importance in the work of 
establishing the Christian way of life in any land. 
Already Christianity’s most effective witness is 
passing out of the hands of missionaries. The 
time is at hand when India, and China, and Japan 
are going to be influenced to accept the Christ way 
of life primarily by the witness of their own 
peoples. Friends from the West will still be most 
urgently needed to help, to counsel, to train, to 
educate, to share experience and aspiration. But 
the Church of the land will be centric—all foreign 
agents will be helpers. Already in the more ad- 
vanced areas we go over—unlike Carey, Morrison, 
and Verbeck—not to establish a Church, but to 
cooperate with a Church already established and 
srowing. 

We now see clearly that the Church that shall 
be able through Christ to redeem and enrich a 
given land must be indigenous, acclimated, nat- 
uralized to that particular land, striking its roots 

154 j 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 155 


deep into the soil of the national life. It is not 
enough that the Church be Christian; it should 
be Indian, or Japanese, or African. Otherwise the 
Church would be an exotic, transplanted move- 
ment lacking real depth and distinctive character. 
It must be suited to the mentality, genius and 
spirit of its people. A Brahman once said to a 
Christian leader, “As long as the ax-head of Chris- 
tianity has a handle of foreign wood, we have 
nothing to fear. But when the handle is made of 
domestic wood, danger is near.” We may lead 
men to the well of life, but we do not need to 
prescribe with what vesseis they shall draw from 
that well. The westerner may want a clean trans- 
parent glass; the Indian may want his fire-cleansed 
and polished brass lota. 

An analogy for the relation of the outer indi- 
genous dress to the inner Christian core of 
religion has been found by a recent traveler in 
China.t_ The Lin Ying Temple near Hangchow had 
been destroyed by fire. The governor of the prov- 
ince sent for Captain Robert Dollar, and said, “I 
want you to go to the United States and bring 
back sixteen of the biggest trees that grow there 
for use in the rebuilding of this temple.” This 
was done. When the traveler visited the temple, 
the bark of the Oregon pinc trees, now stately 
temple pillars, had been removed, and the pillars 
had been covered with red, Chinese lacquer. He 
saw no trademark of an American lumber com- 
pany on them, but on the other hand did see 


aS te Missions Conference of North America, 1922, 
pp. “0. 


156 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


inscriptions in Chinese characters. As he gazed, 
he exclaimed, “I would to God that the Christian 
religion were so practiced in America that the 
Chinese would send over for it, just as they have 
sent to find the best trees in all the world.” The 
pillars caused the added reflection, “Here they 
have taken American pine trees, they have re- 
moved the bark, they have covered the smooth 
surfaces with Chinese lacquer, and they have dec- 
orated them with Chinese inscriptions. There is 
nothing to suggest an American origin; but these 
pillars constitute noi only the glory but the strength 
of the great temple.” 

Surely we may have such confidence in the 
Christ that we will be willing to release Him 
among men everywhere, to be the strength of their 
lives, even though they do not retain the bark of 
our western ecclesiasticism, and although they may 
adopt superscriptions differing from our own, 
which will best express their adoration and devo- 
tion. Increasingly we may expect to see rapid 
strides made in the adaptation of prayers and 
rites, festivals and sacraments, architecture and 
all ecclesiastical symbols to the habits of thought, 
forms, and customs of the people, i. e., in what 
some call the Indianization or Chinification of the 
Church. 


II 


In actual fact the Churches abroad are rapidly 
becoming the most efficient factors in the Chris- 
tian propaganda. In such lands as China, Japan, 
and India indigenous Christian movements have 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 157 


developed with ever-expanding staffs of able 
leaders. Among the nationals of many lands are 
to be found Christian workers who in spirit and 
capacity are fully the equals of the missionaries 
sent to them. Christian leaders, while few nu- 
merically, are often of great influence and are 
becoming powerful factors in re-shaping national 
life, not only through their personal faith and char- 
acter, but also through their social life and ideals. 

Let us look at the Church in China, for example. 
The number of Christians in China has quadrupled 
since 1900, and what is more important than 
numbers, their leaders are earnestly working that 
it should be an indigenous Church, true to the 
genius of China, without any slavish copying of 
the West. It raises annually about $1,500,000— 
about one-tenth as much as is sent to China by 
the various boards. No cause is more heartily 
received by the Chinese than their inclusive, inter- 
denominational Home Missionary Society with its 
twenty-odd missionaries in Yunnan. 

In May, 1922, there was held in Shanghai a 
National Christian Conference that marks the be- 
ginning of a new era in all Christian enterprise 
in China. Twelve hundred delegates were present, 
more than half of whom were Chinese—the very 
flower of the Chinese Church, distinctly and whole- 
heartedly Chinese-centric. Some of these Chinese 
delegates were men who represent the highest 
branches of scholarship—men with degrees in 
divinity or literature, philosophy or medicine, 
from such Universities as Harvard, Yale, Colum- 
bia, or Edinburgh. There were Chinese delegates 


158 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


who: could speak English better than the mission- 
aries present could speak Chinese; and they stood 
up to take part in the debate with an ease, self- 
possession, and command of language that filled 
many European and American delegates with 
wonder. There were Chinese members on each 
of the five Commissions, and the one which 
brought in the most vital report—the message of 
the Chinese Church—was composed entirely of 
Chinese. Apart from the leaders, the contribu- 
tions of the Chinese to the general discussions 
were, on the whole, more relevant and competent 
than those of foreigners. 

Never before has the Chinese Church entered 
upon such a conference on an equal footing with 
the representatives of the missionary societies. 
The Shanghai Conference of 1890 was entirely 
composed of missionaries. The great Centenary 
Conference of 1907 was still a conference of mis- 
sionaries with a small number of Chinese Chris- 
tians. Since then things have moved rapidly, and 
the Chinese Church has grown beyond all expecta- | 
tion. This assembly was of an entirely different 
character from the previous ones, being, as its 
name implies, a National Christian Conference. 
The Chinese who were present were there, not as 
employees of the mission boards (although a large 
number are still supported by western funds), but 
as colleagues and coworkers with the missionaries 
—nay, rather as the accredited representatives of 
the Chinese Church which is steadily keeping 
before it the ideals of self-support and _ self- 
government. | 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 159 


At this Conference the Christian Church of China 
adopted a labor standard for China, asking for no 
child labor under twelve years of age, for one 
day’s rest in seven, and for provision for the health 
and safety of workers. Save in the British colony 
of Hongkong, there is not a law in China of any 
consequence for the restriction of modern indus- 
try, which is pouring into the country with the 
most up-to-date machinery but with almost total 
disregard of the value of the human life which is 
to be chained to the machinery. Never before has 
the Christian Church assumed direct responsibil- 
ity at so early a stage in the industrialization of a 
country. That this was done, will be a noble part 
of the history of the Chinese Church when the 
records are written. This is only one instance of 
many that could be given showing that Christians 
in China are beginning to take great forward steps 
in applying the spirit and principles of Jesus to the 
largest social problems of their nation. 

The National Committee of the Y. M. C. A. in 
China is made up of seventy-five members, all 
Chinese. In 1907, Peking had two foreign and 
one Chinese secretary; in 1923, there were twelve 
foreign and sixty-four Chinese secretaries. In the 
Shanghai Association there are thirty-six secre- 
taries of whom thirty-two are Chinese, and only 
four are American. The number of American 
secretaries has not been increased in the past ten 
years, and they do not expect to increase the num- 
ber in the future. In 1899 one-half the 102 dele- 
gates to the student conference were foreigners; 
in 1911 they numbered only one-sixth; at 1924 


160 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


(the twenty-fifth anniversary) the conference was 
made up largely of Chinese delegates. 

- Evidence of the realization of the existence and 
importance of the Churches abroad has already 
received official embodiment in India, China, and 
Japan. In 1912-1913 “National Misstonary Coun- 
cils” were organized in each of these lands. In 1922 
the names were changed to “National Christian 
Councils” in recognition of the large place taken 
in the evangelization of these lands by their own 
Christians. It is noteworthy that the recent China 
Educational Commission sent out by the mission- 
ary societics of America and Great Britain entitled 
their report “Christian Education in China.” 
Missionary education would have implied the 
presence of the foreigner and at least partial for- 
eign support, but they were distinctly looking 
forward to the time when the foreigner will with- 
draw and leave all the Christian schools to be 
directed and supported by the Chinese Christian 
community. 

Still further indicative of the growing impor- 
tance of the work of the Churches abroad is the 
fact that in the World Missionary Atlas just pub- 
lished the statistical tables completely separate 
facts concerning “The Church in the Field” from 
those concerning “Foreign Staff,” even though such 
a volume still implies the long-standing home-base- 
and-mission-field conception of propagating Chris- 
tianity. Yet many of the facts needed for such a 
volume can now be obtained only from indige- 
nous socicties and Churches. We are coming to a 
time where we shall need a World Christian Year 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 161 


Book. Such a name would indicate that we feel 
that Christians in the more advanced areas have 
graduated from the missionary stage. May not 
these developing Churches of the East be as sig- 
nificant in the future as those of France or Britain 
now are? Certainly no one should generalize 
about the progress of Christianity in these days 
and forget that Christendom dces not stop with the 
boundaries of western nations. 


lil 


This change in point of view which makes the 
indigenous Church centric has not yet completely 
permeated actual practice. A senior missionary, 
secretary for his mission, writing a personal let- 
ter in 1923 was, unfortunately, able to say 


Not all the missions by any means are inclined 
to respect the local church authorities, nor to 
foster the growth of an organized native Church. 
Quite a number of our men insist on playing the 
bishop and ignoring the local leaders altogether, 
ordering native ministers about like subordinates. 


In many instances where missionaries and mis- 
sions have really sought the assistance of nationals 
on questions touching their Church, this sharing 
of responsibility has depended ultimately on the 
will and temperament of individual missionaries, 
and has not been made a matter of right by legis- 
lation. In the midst of routine work it is easy 
to overlook the fact that circumstances change, 
that things are not today as they were thirty years 

ago or even five years ago. 


162 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


The growth of national and racial self-con- 
sciousness and pride is a striking new factor in 
present-day missions. Our relations are to an 
increasingly sensitive national leadership. One is, 
therefore, regretful but not wholly surprised to 
have Dr. Cheng Ching Yi, the responsible and 
trusted leader of Chinese Christians, frankly state 
to the assembled leaders of American missionary 
societies in 1923: 


May we say with all kindness that the missions 
have been altogether too fearful of surrendering 
their control....The time has come for a 
thoroughgoing reconsideration of the whole situa- 
tion, and for readjustments that will enable the 
church to move forward along constructive lines. 
Failure to make these adjustments will mean dis- 
aster both to the church and the mission.? 


This same leader in his presidential address at 
the National Christian Conference at Shanghai 
' the year before said: 

For many years missionaries have been com- 
mitted to the position that it is right that the 
Christian Church should become naturalized in 
every country in which it is found. What is needed 
today is not so much a statement, or a restatement 
of the ideal just mentioned, but rather the 
realizing of that ideal. The difficulty is that while 
there has been agreement in theory too little has 
been done to put it into operation. That is the 
real trouble. ... We would solemnly declare it 
is our mature Judgment that the success of the 
work of every mission should be judged in the 
final analysis by the degree in which it has suc- 
ceeded in putting that ideal into actual practice. 


? Report of the Foreign Missionary Conference of North 
America, 1923, p. 203, 4 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 163 


In India, too, we find the same feeling. At the 
National Missionary Council in Calcutta in 1913 
the following resolution was passed: 


While the Conference believes that the Indian 
Church should continue to receive and absorb 
every good influence which the Church of the past 
may impart to it, it also believes that, in respect 
of forms and organization the Indian Church 
should have entire freedom to develop on such 
lines as will conduce to the most national expres- 
sion of the spiritual instincts of Indian Christians.° 


Ten years later (1923) at the meeting of the new 
National Christian Council, there was on all hands 
an almost passionate desire for a Christianity 
which should address itself to Indian hearts in 
Indian ways. Together with a frank acknowledg- 
ment of the need for continued help and counsel 
from the western Church, there went a new long- 
ing that the Church in India should be free, under 
the guidance of the Spirit, to work out its ‘own 
ideals under Indian leadership. 

We have slowly come to realize that the people 
of India can play on their own home instruments 
chords of religious music that touch and move 
their own hearts. They love their melodies. We 
now see that we have come with our foreign in- 
struments; and, though the music has been that of 
the great Master, our inability to appreciate their 
instruments and our rough handling of them has 
left much to be desired. Certain it is that in most 
fields we have not waited for the outer forms of 


* The Harvest Field, April, 1913, pp. 156-160. 
“Young Men of India, VOU545 Dbl aei 


164 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


religious expression to arise as the natural growth 
of the religious consciousness of the indigenous 
group. We have gone into lands which have 
known only individual worship, and have intro- 
duced congregational worship after a western pat- 
tern with synods and presbyteries and confer- 
ences, with paid pastors, with deacons and elders, 
with standing committees and the like—systems 
wholly unlike what the native religious conscious- 
ness would have created if left to itself. 

In the past fifteen years, however, the devolution 
of initiative and powers and responsibilities from 
the foreign missions to the young Churches has 
received an immense amount of attention, and 
many missions have taken radical steps in the 
way of transfer of authority and leadership. For 
the most part it is a consciously accepted principle 
of missionary work that Churches should be de- 
veloped among different peoples according to their 
genius and culture rather than presented ready- 
made by westerners. 


IV 


The centralization of the rising Churches abroad 
makes necessary a whole series of readjustments. 

1. For one thing it is leading us to alter our 
vocabulary. The rise of Christian churches abroad 
of necessity expands the content of the word 
“Christendom.” There are those who still speak 
of Christianity as though there was nothing likely 
to happen outside the limits of western civiliza- 
lions. In judging whether Christianity is advanc- 
ing, they think of Europe and America, but forget 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 165 


Africa and Asia. It cannot be too strongly stated, 
however, that any review of Christianity must 
now include the Churches of other than western 
lands. In fact, there are those who fecl that just as 
Christianity in the past has found successive cen- 
ters in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constan- 
tinople, Rome, so its center may even now be 
passing from an unworthy West to a receptive 
East. It seems perfectly natural to remind Chris- 
tians abroad that they are members, not simply 
of an Indian Church or a Chinese Church, respon- 
sible for the evangelization of their own countries, 
but that they are members of a world-wide Church. 
Let us not forget that we, too, are members of a 
world-wide Church and should not be determining 
our policies simply as western groups. 

Certain other words or phrases should be 
changed for the simple reason that conditions have 
altered since these expressions entered our mis- 
sionary diction. To retain these phrases would be 
to increase that mental inertia which is all too apt 
to hold us to the conditions of yesterday. For 
example, we often use the expression “missionary 
movement” or “missionary enterprise” when we 
really mean the whole, present development of 
Christianity abroad. In earlier days when converts 
were few and unorganized, there was some justifi- 
cation for speaking of all Christian work abroad 
as “missionary.” But in these days to assume all 
the progress of the Kingdom abroad under the 
heading “missionary” is to overlook the extraor- 
dinarily significant fact that each country now 
has Christians of its own. Unless we are inten- 


166 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


tionally distinguishing the work merely of those 
technically called “missionaries” would it not be 
a great deal better to speak of “the Christian move- 
ment abroad,” thus recognizing the share in the 
work taken by the Christian people of those lands? 
Even where we could correctly speak of “our 
society’s missionary work in India,” meaning by 
this the work of the foreign organization, may it 
not be better to talk of “our share in the Christian 
work in India”? Suppose we want to speak about 
~ “men and women returning from our foremost 
mission fields.” That scems harmless enough. 
But there are two distinct gains in a slight change - 
to “men and women returning from the most ad- 
vanced Christian work abroad.” We cannot too 
carefully school ourselves to realize that the idea 
of Christendom must be broadened to include the 
growing Churches abroad. 

We sometimes speak about “the missionary pro- 
gram in a given land.” If used without discrim- 
ination, this overlooks the way in which programs 
are more and more actually being developed: i.e., 
by the codperative thought of both national and 
foreigner. In that case, precise usage would speak 
of “the Christian program.” It is supremely im- 
portant that we western Christians should not be 
oblivious of Christian coworkers in other lands, 
and the very care used in habituating ourselves to 
discriminating phrascology may help us to keep 
the right perspective. 

We have “prayers for missions”; we ask for “the 
protection of missionarics”; we commend to God’s 
fatherly care “all whom God has called to take 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 167 


part in the missionary work of the Church”; and 
we ask God to “hear the prayers of the Church 
for those who go forth to preach the Gospel to 
every creature.” Such phrases are right and proper 
if one is intentionally limiting one’s prayer to mis- 
sionaries. It is unfortunate, however, if these 
expressions limit our intercession so that definite 
prayer for the welfare, growth, and forth-going 
service of the people themselves never becomes 
quite explicit in our minds. Usually when we pray 
for missions, our real interest is in the general 
advancement of the Christian cause in other lands, 
and we have no conscious desire to shut out of 
consideration the work by Christians other than 
missionaries. In such cases we might pray “for 
the Church now found in every land,” “for all 
Christians,” or “for pastors and ministers of our 
own and other lands.” By such expressions we 
will help ourselves and others to think in terms 
of a universal and Catholic Church. 

2. Making the development of indigenous 
churches central in our thought is beginning to 
show itself in our promotion literature at home. 
Many of the older reports of foreign missions 
which went out from our boards to their constitu- 
encies dealt almost wholly with what we call 
“mission work.” The mission stations and the mis- 
sionaries were most prominent, so that almost 
inevitably in the minds of our constituencies, 156 
Fifth Avenue, or 150 Fifth Avenue, or 14 Beacon 
Street, or Philadelphia, or Dayton, rose to people’s 
minds when they thought of foreign missions, 
instead of the Churches on the mission field. In 


168 ©§WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


some reports one almost had to hunt to find any- 
thing which represented in any very definite way 
_ the progress of the Churches. Why should we not 
definitely dignify the small events connected with 
the Churches we go to found? Even if it is a 
little contribution that they give, even if it is only 
a little home missionary effort that they make, why 
should that be ignored? It should seem natural 
to us to sce a report come out with the very first 
page devoted to this central fact in our missionary 
program, the establishment, the development, the 
progress of these Churches on the mission field. 

3. It is recognized that Christian literature pro- 
duced on the field must smack of the soil. While 
remaining absolutely loyal to Christ in every way, 
it must be made truly Indian, or Japanese, or Chi- 
nese. Not only the language, but the literary 
forms, the illustrations, the ways in which things 
are put, indeed the whole literature must appeal to 
the people as theirs. It is beginning to be recog- 
nized that few foreigners can meet this demand, 
and that much of our foreign-made Christian lit- 
erature of the past has been almost a failure. 
Reorganization is taking place in certain centers 
giving overwhelming priority to native judgment 
and authorship. For a century the attempt has 
been made in China to provide acceptable Chris- — 
tian literature through missionaries with Chinese 
amanuenses. Slowly leaders have come to real- 
ize that money and control must be given to the 
Chinese so that they may choose what is wanted, 
shape it, and set the style with chosen foreigners 
only as advisors. 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 169 


4. The principle involves yielding places of 
leadership to nationals as soon as this can be 
wisely done. We are undoubtedly in a transitional 
period when the directing control of Christian 
work is passing from the hands of missionaries 
to nationals. Already in China, Japan, and India 
certain nationals of these lands have become rank- 
ing executives above missionaries, not for senti- 
mental artificial reasons, but because they are 
fitted for it. Several mission colleges in India have 
appointed Indian presidents. A Chinese has been 
made dean of the theological school of Peking 
University. In both the Anglican and the Methodist 
Churches in Japan, Japanese bishops have been 
consecrated; in India an Indian bishop is in full 
charge of a diocese in the Anglican Church; and 
in China in the same church there is a Chinese 
assistant bishop. An able Indian missionary was 
considering remaining home after furlough be- 
cause he feared his presence would hinder an 
Indian from taking over the educational work as 
soon as he otherwise might. The foreign heads 
of several schools have resigned and accepted the 
vice-principalships. British missionaries are 
working under Indian Councils. In some areas 
decisions by missions may be reviewed by the 
Church of the land. 

At the recent Y. M. C. A. convention at Tokyo, 
the foreign secretary did not know anything more 
about the program than any other speaker. At 
another Y. M. C. A. convention at Tientsin, China, 
it was plain that foreigners were working under 
Chinese secretaries, and that the Chinese were 


170 ‘WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


freely recognized as their superiors in position. 
The foreigners were thoroughly respected, but the 
Chinese did not hesitate to take the leadership. 
One visitor resented the situation and did not like 
the way things were going. Evidently there was 
no foreign imperialism anywhere in the conven- 
tion. He and others from the West were not looked 
up to as essential, nor was their advice sought on > 
every occasion simply because of holy orders, or 
of race, or of standing. 

A missionary from China recently predicted 
that “within ten years there will not be a single 
important administrative position held by a mis- 
sionary.”’ Another rather selfishly laments that 
“the Chinese are now taking all the places of 
leadership in the Church so that there is no place 
or opportunity for a Westerner.” These are un- 
doubtedly extreme statements, but they show the 
present tendency and indicate the re-orientation 
through which missionarics and missionary organi- 
zations must pass during the next few decades. 

That much remains to be done in the matter of 
transfer of powers and authority, even in a rela- 
tively advanced area like China, is indicated by 
the judgment of the recent Educational Commis- 
sion when they called attention to the strikingly 
small proportion of Chinese in executive or 
responsible teaching positions as a damaging 
weakness Icading the Chinese to look upon mission 
schools with indifference or dislike as a foreign 
element in their national life.6 And at the National 
Christian Conference in Peking, in 1922, Commis- 


*“Christian Education in China,” p. 114. 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 171 


sion II asserted that the time has come for the 
subordination of the activities of the missions to 
the advice and direction of the Chinese ecclesias-- 
tical authorities, since two-thirds of church control 
still resides in the missionary. 

Missionaries of the future may not have as much 
glory and certainly will not have so much consti- 
tutional power as some of their predecessors had. 
In many situations and kinds of work an individ- 
ual missionary will be expected to plan his work 
so as to provide for his own speedy elimination 
as the men and women around him grow capable 
of taking his place. A very able missionary once 
said to me, “When I came out here, I made up 
my mind that I would train a young Japanese 
who could take my place if I were eliminated, and 
I did it.” In fact, it is said that a man is not consid- 
ered an efficient Y. M. C. A. secretary in China 
unless he succeeds in working himself out of a 
job and putting a Chinese in his place. 

Thus the missionary of the future must be willing 
to serve under the nationals to whom he goes. At 
present it is common practice for nationals to serve 
under us; we rarely serve under them. In the 
few cases where a foreign missionary serves under 
a national, it is usually found that the controlling 
body is foreign. In the brotherly, democratic, and 
Christian relationship we wish to establish with 
our co-workers abroad, reciprocity is essential. 
When circumstances justify it, we must make it 
plain that we are ready to serve under them. 

I can think now of one who comes definitely to 
mind. He lives a most self-effacing life. His 


172 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


Indian associate has the first place and comes first 
in the public eye. It is quite right that this national 
. Should appear as the leader for he is worthy. Yet 
I am sure that he never could be what he is, were 
it not for the faithful, laborious backing that | 
he receives from this missionary, who is sinking 
his life there, unseen and unheralded. 

We cannot overestimate the importance of such 
a spirit in the recruits of the future. It will tre-_ 
mendously help in making the Church indigenous 
when Chinese or Japanese or Indians are ranking 
executives over their helpers from the West. No 
missionary of the future should be sent out who 
is not willing for his associates to be on a par 
with him, or, it may easily be, above him. Already 
at least one mission is putting its young recruiis — 
under the direction of a wise national leader from 
the start. We can see, therefore, that in some — 
ways a distinctive type of missionary is going to 
be required. 

5. The position just taken places tremendous 
emphasis on the training of leadership. The pre- 
vious section was equivalent to saying that a 
missionary’s business is to make himself dispen- 
sable as soon as possible. When this principle 
becomes operative in affecting policy, it at once 
becomes plain that a greater place has to be given 
to the training of indigenous leadership. If the 
work is to be done by them, they manifestly should 
be as well trained as the missionaries have been. 
This has meant adopting additional methods of 
developing leadership. 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 173 


One effective way has been through associating 
colleagues from the people with missionaries. 
The direction of the Y. M. C. A. in China, in India, 
and in Japan, has now passed over to a national of 
each country, respectively. In more than one 
instance the transfer was preceded by a stage when 
foreigners and nationals were co-secretaries. 
American Y. M. C. A. workers in China are some- 
times general secretaries but never in the same 
sense as they would be in America; they are always 
associates to the Chinese and, if general secretaries, 
their position is recognized as_ temporary. 
Similarly there are missionaries who definitely 
associate with themselves those whom they expect 
eventually to take over the matters concerned, in- 
asmuch as in this way they will be able to transfer 
responsibilities with more certainty to the 
churches. 

The new policy means, furthermore, giving these 
men and women, when once trained, opportunities 
for the genuine expression of their own aspirations 
and discipleship. A few missions have set aside 
whole areas where new experiments are being 
made under the control and with the methods of 
the people even though subsidized with foreign 
money. 

Heretofore the training of this leadership has 
been almost wholly within the leader’s own 
country—China, Japan, India. In very few cases 
have missionary societies, as such, brought 
workers from abroad to America for graduate 
work. Three boards, however, have been experi- 


174 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


menting somewhat’ extensively in_ bringing 
selected nationals to the United States for training. 
One of these spends from ten to fifteen thousand 
dollars a year for this purpose. Every alert mis- 
sionary realizes how much he gains by stopping off 
to see the best work in other fields when traveling 
back and forth on furlough. If we come from 
India, we stop off in Korea and China, or in Japan 
and the Philippines. Or, when on furlough, our 
boards send us down to Tuskegee or Hampton, or 
make provision for our study in various places 
where study will profit us. Undoubtedly, as we 
take up more seriously this turning of things over 
to the people, more help will be given selected 
leaders, who have had experience, to enable them 
to get the training and broadening experiences 
that missionaries receive, and thus qualify them 
to take over positions missionaries occupy. 

The securing of funds for this training will mean 
in many cases drastic action on the part of 
societies. Some missions already are withholding 
sending out their usual quota of recruits, in order 
to have money for the training of indigenous 
workers. The official secretary of one of the large 
missions in China wrote to his Board in 1923: 


What we shall ask of the Board and of Christians 
in America is to build up strong schools and to 
enable Christian students to attend them. Chinese 
workers will take the place of missionaries from 
America. They will be far more effective mis- 
sionaries, if they are given a training somewhat 
comparable to that of a missiOnary, and put in 
responsible positions with genuine freedom of 
action. 


GIVING WAY TO NATIONALS 175 


If the positions of the last two sections are 
correct, more and more of the work will be under 
the management and control of nationals and less 
and less under that of missionaries. Manifestly 
this transition to the support of work under in- 
digenous leadership will require a re-adjustment 
in the minds of the giving constituency, and of the 
policy of our boards. This is indicated by the 
statement made by the Educational Commission 
to China that it is always easier to get a new 
appointee from the home board, than funds for 
paying high-salaried Chinese." Administrators are 
asking whether they can maintain the interest of 
the home Churches on the newer plan. The giving 
constituency has been used to thinking of missions 
in terms of the missionary. They have been glad 
to send forth ambassadors to maintain interest 
and make the enterprise objective to their minds. 
At present $2,000,000 out of a total! $3,000,000 in 
one of America’s societies goes to the salaries and 
travel of missionaries. Could they raise their 
budget, if the amount spent on missionaries was 
largely devoted to the support of work in the hands 
of local churches? When one of our great boards 
was asked by its mission to send more money as 
well as more missionaries, but if they could not 
send both, to send the money for work by Chinese, 
the board sent missionaries without the money, 
because they feared the effect on the home Church 
of lessening the number of missionaries. The 
situation shows that there is need for very definite 
education of the home constituency on this point 
if the transition is to be made safely. 

*“Christian Education in China,” p. 113. 


CHAPTER X 


\ 


ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY AND TYPE OF WORK 
I 


THESE considerations inevitably raise the ques- 
tion as to the numbers of missionaries to be sent. * 
Hearing of the progressive devolution of powers | 
and responsibilities to the Churches abroad, many 
a young and thoughtful student is saying to him- 
self: 


7 

I have before me real opportunities for service in 
America and have no desire to go to the foreign - 
field simply for the sake of “being a missionary.” 
I am interested, however, in meeting a need. 
Is there an actual need for more missionaries, or 
would additional men be accepted simply with 
good-natured tolerance? | 





On this question the testimony is clear. The 
following resolution was unanimously adopted by 
foreign and Chinese members of Commission II 
on the Future Task of the Church and presented 
to the National Christian Conference, Shanghai, 
May, 1922: 

That to answer the challenge of the unoccupied 
areas and to make possible an effectual entry by 
the church into these open doors, the preparation 
of Chinese Icaders be stressed during the next few 
years, and the foreign missionary force be main- 
tained at least at its present strength. 

176 





ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 177 


At the recent Student Volunteer Convention, Dr. 
Cheng Ching Yi, who was chairman of the National 
Christian Conference to which reference has just 
been made, gave the following as his judgment: 


It is true that 74 per cent of the entire Chinese 

territory has been claimed by one or more foreign 
missions. It is true that the Chinese Christians 
are coming forward to shoulder their responsi- 
bility and to get themselves under the burden. Yet 
you will entirely misunderstand the situation if 
you think that there will be no need any more for 
missionaries. You will misjudge the situation if 
you think your missionary effort has almost come 
to an end. Why, the work is just at its very 
beginning. We are needing missionaries today 
perhaps more than ever before. 


At this same Convention, speaking for Japan, 
where more than in any other mission country the 
Church is at its highest development and efficiency, 
Rev. H. Hatanka said: 


We ask you to come to Japan to help us remove 
the evils, revealing Christ in their lives. We ask 
you to come and participate in a task that is larger 
than strengthening a denomination or building a 
church or even saving many souls. It is the great 
task of uniting nations, races, and classes by the 
common spirit of Christ, upon the principle of the 
brotherhood of Jesus. We do not ask you to come 
because our people are born militarists and bad, 
but we ask you to come because we believe the 
spirit of Christ lives in our people, although some- 
times it is hidden and disguised. 


Prof. U. Kawaguchi, Ph.D., in 1923 asked 
eighty-two of the leading Japanese Christian 


-178 WHITHER BOUND. IN MISSIONS 


workers whether they thought missionaries are 
still needed by the Japanese Church. His report 
states that a large majority affirm this need on > 
various grounds such as the vastness of the non- 
Christian population, the unevangelized condition 
of the country, the scarcity and the difficulty of 
securing Japanese workers, and the fact that the 
missionary is specially qualified to do some kinds 
of work which the Japanese worker is unable to 
undertake. 

Prof. Yohan Masih, of India, speaking of the 
work among outcastes, said: 

Thousands and thousands had to be refused bap- 
tism. Thousands had to be refused to be admitted, 


because there was no arrangement to be made for. 
their training. 


To Bishop Azariah—a recognized leader of the 
Indian Church—the following question was put: 
“When the foreign missionary work now under 
the missionary societies is obviously and perman- 
ently related to the Church in India, what will still 
be required from the Church of the west?” 

His answer was: 


This does not mean that these fields will not 
require men and money any longer. The Church 
will still require all the sympathy and help that 
‘he older Churches of the West can give it for a 
long time to come. Even if the Church in some of 
the districts should become entirely self-support- 
ing tomorrow, yet, for the training of the workers 
and of the clergy, for manning the educational 
institutions for its youth, for conducting its col- 

4“The Christian Movement in Japan, Korea and For- 
mosa,” 1923, pp. 87-93. 


ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 179 


leges and hostels for non-Christians, and for de- 
veloping in its workers a strong spiritual life and 
a spirit of self-sacrificing service, it will need for 
some long time to come the best men that the 
Church and the universities of the West can pro- 
duce. Financial support, also, will still be required 
for the training of the clergy and other leaders of 
the Church, until Indian Christians themselves 
can equip and endow their own _ theological 
colleges. 


It such statements can be made by trusted rep- 
resentatives of the three most advanced mission 
areas, all the more could strong appeals be made 
in behalf of Africa, Central Asia, large areas in 
Western Asia, the pure Indians and the tropical 
portions of South America, and other less vigorous 
Christian communities. It is estimated that if 
missionary work throughout the world were not 
increased the number of new recruits needed each 
year to replace those who have died, or have had 
to return to their own countries because of health 
or other reasons, is approximately 1,200 from the 
Protestants of the United States and Canada. In 
some areas a church is practically non-existent. 

One minor consideration in determining the pro- 
portion of available funds that should be invested 
in western missionaries is the relative cost of west- 
ern and eastern workers. It would be foolish to 
attempt to measure the gift of personality in terms 
of money cost, but no board can afford to ignore 
such an argumeni altogether. The China Chris- 
tian Educational Commission? says that for what 


*“Christian Education in China,” p. 405. 


180 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


it costs to maintain one high-grade foreign edu- 
cator, five able Chinese educators could be sup- 
ported. This at once raises the question whether 
the average missionary will contribute as much 
as four or five Christian Chinese. On the other 
hand the London Missionary Society’s Deputation 
to India in 1922-reported: ° 


... that in point of salary the Indian man of 
any qualifications is every year more nearly ap- 
roximating to the European, while the educated 
ndian Christian woman can actually command a 
higher rate of pay, whether in education or medi- 
cine, than we give to the woman missionary of 
equal qualifications. There are so many oppor- 
tunitics for Indian women of education that their 
salaries run very high... . If it be economy of 
which we are thinking, the grounds for replace- 
ment are not very convincing. 


There is no unanimity of judgment as to the 
relative cost of equally qualified workers— 
national and missionary. 

We must guard against the inference that any 
immediate reduction in the missionary force is 
contemplated. It would be a serious mistake to 
infer that the meager membership of the young 
Churches abroad can shoulder without help the 
responsibility of carrying the Gospel to the un- 
evangelized of their people. The magnitude of the 
task involved in enabling the peoples of the earth 
to know and have fellowship with Jesus Christ will 
demand a large number of missionaries for an 
indefinite time to come. Furthermore, these young 

P1658. 


ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 181 


Churches still need the touch with older and larger 
Christian experience that is secured through mis- 
sionaries. 


II 


While culture groups in other lands will un- 
questionably call during a generation or more for 
a transfer of personnel from older Christian lands, 
yet there is an unmistakable feeling on the part of 
Christian nationals that there should be an adjust- 
ment, if not in numbers, at least in quality and 
type of work. The time has passed for thinking 
of recruiting in terms merely of quantity—more 
missionaries. Conditions may only be aggravated 
by advocating missions in mathematical terms— 
sO many missionaries for every million of in- 
habitants of mission lands. Such a_ procedure 
would run athwart the best in the national con- 
sciousness of several peoples. Various additional 
present-day factors have to be taken into con- 
sideration in considering the question of number. 
The desire on the part of nationals for more west- 
ern Christians in their midst is conditional. For 
one thing, the probable effect on the Churches to 
which they go is becoming a consideration in de- 
termining the ideal number and type of mission- 
arics. Some hold that when a Church becomes 
self-conscious, when the national spirit gets to a 
certain point, too many missionarics may retard 
the work. From this standpoint some would say 
that the number of missionaries has reached the 
saturation point in China. A bishop in Japan de- 
finitely proposes that the ratio of foreign mis- 


182 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


sionaries to Japanese Church workers should not 
exceed a certain figure. In other places only a 
portion of the missionary staff is associated with 
the indigenous Church lest the young shoot be 
smothered; the rest work independently of it. 

It is a significant fact that at the Christian Con- 
ference in Shanghai in May, 1922, very little em- 
phasis was placed during the sessions on the need 
of more recruits from outside China. Very great 
emphasis, however, was placed on securing the 
right kind of Christian leaders. When some of 
the younger Chinese Christians at the Conference 
were asked whether this meant that no mission- 
aries would be needed in China in the future, they 
replied: “No, but hereafter only those will be 
wanted who can coéperate to the fullest extent 
with the Chinese, keeping themselves, meanwhile, 
in the background, and putting the Chinese for- 
ward into positions of leadership.” As soon as the 
Chinese and Japanese and Indian Christians be- 
lieve that we really acknowledge that they are 
masters in their own house, as soon as entire or 
almost entire administrative responsibility is 
placed on the more developed churches, when 
missionaries frankly accept the position of ad- 
visors, help is eagerly desired and numbers wel- 
comed. 

It has to be acknowledged that the conditions 
of an ideal spiritual partnership are still being 
worked out. In addition to qualifications 
demanded of earlier missionaries such as 
physical health, adequate intellectual training and 
sterling Christian characters, modern missionaries 


ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 183 


to established Churches are called to lose them- 
selves with men and women of other races in a 
common service to the Kingdom of Christ; they 
will be those whose ambition is not to become 
directors and superintendents, but friends and 
fellow workers; they will expect ,to work with or 
under leaders of the land as loyalty to the greatest 
good may require; they will have the“insight to 
see that the most lasting and fruitful service may 
be the most hidden and unannounced. 

Commission IV of the National Christian Con- 
ference in Shanghai, 1922, has the following to say 
to home societies with regard to missionary 
workers: 


Only those with large vision and trained in the 
best that the West can give, can hope to meet 
_ successfully the multitude of problems that press 
upon the Chinese Church in these days of change. 
Hence, we record here our appeal to the various 
Boards of Missions, that they will hereafter send 
to China men and women of the best quality, and 
with large vision, of broad mind, large heart, and, 
if possible, of large experience and high attain- 
ments. The mission work has grown larger and 
needs larger men. With the rapidly growing 
number of native leaders who have received the 
best training that the universities of the East and 
the West have to offer, one may well inquire 
whether anything less than the best the West has 
Gat dons be wisely offered for this important 
work. 


Recruiting agencies have been emphasizing 
“quality” through the years. Traveling secretaries, 
missionaries on furlough, board officials—all who 


184 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


have really caught the vision of the Christ and the 
world in need—have stressed the need for quality 
in workers. We admit that to define just what 
one means by qualify is exceedingly difficult for 
it docs not always go with a Phi Beta Kappa key 
or a Ph.D. degree.. Every recruit of the present 
day would shrink from any suggestion that he or 
she 1s expected to tower in quality above the giants 
of earlier days. Nevertheless there is something 
behind this very common emphasis on the need 
for quality rather than quantity. 

Sometimes people who urge this emphasis want 
men and women who can give to the Christian 
movement abroad in our day and with its 
problems the same gifts of personality, organiza- 
tion, and leadership that the men of old gave in 
their day. Sometimes they mean that now there 
are nationals in China and India, in Japan and 
in South America who are good, who are able, 
and through whom the Spirit of God is working, 
and hence, in their opinion, missionaries must be 
all these things and more. They must be so 
equipped and so trained that in some one line at 
least they may be able to make a distinct con- 
tribution to the group. Still others point out with 
reference to work—cspecially educational work— 
the conflict between a possible policy that will 
make for quality even at the cost of larger appro- 
priations or a drastic reduction in the number of 
schools, and the all too prevalent policy of expan- 
sion, of penetration, of evangelization, where value 
is placed on quantily of contacts. By quality some 
mean a man—a gentleman—with powers of growth 





ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 185 


and with a grasp of Christianity. Some undoubt- 
edly would like to see sent to India or China, a 
small group of specially picked men, men big 
enough in personality to merit the friendship of 
the leaders of these nations, possessed of unques- 
tioned professional experience so that their judg- 
ment would be sought, men who could help to 
analyze a people’s problems, who could command 
through travel and correspondence the advice of 
the best minds of the West, so that through a new 
and larger way they could befriend a_ people. 
Hard as it is to define, back of this almost universal 
emphasis on quality, is the truth that mere num- 
bers are not enough. 


it 


Apart from the question of numbers we must 
more and more recognize that missionaries will 
be asked for, located, and retained at the call of 
the Church on the mission field. Already in several 
missions joint committees of missionaries and 
nationals are determining the number of new mis- 
sionaries for which their area should ask, and are 
settling their disposition after arrival. Already in 
several advanced missions in several countries, the 
number of new missionaries called for must re- 
ceive the approval of the Church to which they go, 
the location of those who do come is left to the 
Church, and the Church decides whether a given 
missionary shall be asked to return after furlough 
or not. The suggestion has been seriously made 
on the floor of the Foreign Missions Conference 
of North America that suitable nationals sit on the 


186 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


candidate committees of our missionary societies 
in this country in order to secure missionaries who 
will suit the national temperament. 

In other words, the initiative in determining the 
number and type of missionary recruits is passing 
from the mission_boards to the indigenous Chris- 
tian Churches. Several missionaries are now back 
permanently because of decisions made by native 
vote. At least one board has sent to experienced 
Indian Christians for their judgment as to the 
wisdom of the permanent appointment of a young 
man who had been out on short term. These 
leaders were surprised, and thought there must 
be some mistake, for never before had they or 
their friends been asked to give letters of reference 
for a missionary. 

In other words, the first term of missionaries is 
becoming somewhat probational from the stand- 
point of their acceptability, not simply to the 
boards, but to the people of the land to which they 
go. The nineteenth century brought missionaries 
to the test as to whether they could use nationals. 
The twentieth will test the nationals as to whether 
they can use missionaries. Of course, this will 
make mission service less inviting to certain types 
of people. A recent conference which had met 
to consider a nation-wide missionary program 
felt it worth while to discuss the question: “Will 
students respond to the missionary appeal today 
more because they believe that Churches at home 


‘There are signs that the counterpart of this will also 
be recognized—that a junior missionary may honorably 
resign, if he feels it wise to do so, without any reflection 
on his loyalty to the cause. 


ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 187 


want men and women to go, or because they are 
convinced that the best student minds in non- 
Christian lands want them to come?” Some may 
hesitate to go abroad, if they feel that their con- 
tinuance in the land and even their location while 
there will be determined by the people among 
whom they go. 

Hence candidates for work abroad are facing 
three significant words in thinking about the 
position of the missionary of the future. The mis- 
sionary enterprise is femporary—the Church and 
not the mission is the more permanent organiza- 
tion. The missionary is secondary. He has come to 
assist and not to boss. It is the missionary, not the 
national, who is the proverbial “helper.” And in 
the third place the missionary’s function is ad- 
visory. It is acknowledged by the best opinion of 
Christians abroad that the missionary’s presence 
is still needed and his advice necessary. But it is 
as clear as day in the more advanced mission fields 
that it is only in such advisory capacity that he 
can render to the Church his greatest, most lasting, 
and most appreciated service. Temporary, 
secondary, advisory—these are adjectives which 
are not supposed to appeal to the ambitions of 
strong men. 

Fortunately we can expect that special condi- 
tions will find their special ministers. This genera- 
tion, also, has those who acknowledge the lordship 
of One who said: “He that would be greatest 
among you, shall be the servant of all.” Oppor- 
tunities for maximum service, for largest unselfish- 
ness, and for unwearying, unceasing absorption in 


188 | WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


the greatest work of the world—the building up 
of God’s Kingdom—will draw men today as of old. 
I firmly believe that among the students of the 
oncoming generation will be those who will not be 
one whit less well prepared, not one whit less 
committed to the Gospel, and not one whit less 
outstanding in other ways, in comparison with 
those who have gone before, who will gladly take 
the second place, who will go out understanding 
that they are to decrease, and recognizing that they 
_ have the mind of Christ only when they are willing 
to be servants and helpers, not rulers. 

To the present-day student volunteer the mis- 
sionary task presents itself as a sharing of the 
work of world evangelization with such young 
Christians from other lands as he meets at con- 
ferences of the World’s Student Federation or in 
his local University. At such recent conventions as 
the World’s Student Christian Conference at Pek- 
ing (1922) and the Quadrennial Student Volunteer 
Conference at Indianapolis (1924) emphasis was 
put on getting the point of view of the people of 
Asia and Africa. At the former conference the 
resolutions on the qualifications necessary in 
candidates for foreign service were drawn up by 
a committee consisting of an American Negro 
Professor, a Red Indian student, a Syrian Christian 
from South India, national student leaders from 
Japan and China, an American, a South African 
and an Englishman. It is difficult to exaggerate 
the importance of this procedure. It instils a new 
confidence in many Orientals, and starts a new 
strain of thought in the minds of all concerning 


ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 189 


the place and function of missionary work. At the 
Indianapolis Convention students realized that the 
exhibit emphasized codperation with the indigen- 
ous agencies rather than dictating and forcing 
western standards and ideas. Some frankly said 
that they were glad to see Japanese and African 
jeaders pictured side by side with the missionaries. 
Missionary recruiting is coming to be regarded not 
as the securing of superior leaders but of fellow- 
workers, colleagues and friends of the Church 
leaders abroad. Candidates are going out ready 
from the very beginning to conform their stand- 
ards of efficiency and methods of work to the best 
expression of the genius of their adopted land. 


IV 


There must be further practical adjustments. 
It is of the greatest importance that the Church 
in each land should develop with increasing 
strength and rapidity as an indigenous organiza- 
tion. But it is not always easy to see how it can 
be free to determine its own plans and to build 
in such a way as to express its own life and yet at 
the same time to receive that aid which the older, 
stronger western Churches are ready to give. 
Moreover, nationals are beginning to realize that 
the new rights of control carry with them burdens 
heavy to bear. Seeing how great are the resporsi- 
bilities which missionaries have been carrying, and 
with what meager resources they have worked, 
some draw back from accepting offered control. 
Not infrequently where missionaries are most 
ready to turn things over, they find nationals un- 


190 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


ready to receive. In fact, this is because they have 
not been educated for independence. As _ self- 
consciousness on a nation-wide scale increases 
along with a corresponding assumption of respon- 
sibility, fresh realignments of work and the estab- 
lishment of new relationships are inevitable. 
Hence, adjustments in the organization of com- 
mittees, joint sessions, and church councils will 
continue to occupy some of the best minds of the 
ablest workers, both foreign and national. 

Increasingly foreign boards are recognizing that 
their policies abroad will be determined by the 
Christian people living in these countries. Not only 
on the field, but here in America also the leader- 
ship and contribution of the various nationals are 
being sought. For several years distinguished na- 
tionals have been asked to address the Foreign 
Missions Conference of North America. A secre- 
tary of one of our larger boards recently expressed 
his strong desire to have a distinguished Chinese 
who has acted as their assistant secretary in China 
invited to sit during his visit to America in the 
formal meeting of his board. That the secretary 
should have to manifest much hesitation as to 
whether he could bring this about, shows how far 
behind the trend of the times he judges that even 
board members are. Very likely the time will 
come when boards and candidate committees will 
seek to enlist the active, constructive judgment of 
qualified nationals from other lands in their ses- 
sions. There may not be many here at any one 
time, but when trusted leaders are here we shall 
surely want them in councils at this end. 


ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 191 


In particular we are more and more recognizing 
that we do not need to look to missionaries alone 
as the agents through whom our money may be 
spent abroad. One great board is turning over its 
budget for Japan to a committee predominantly 
Japanese. Certainly there is no reason for con- 
tinuing to consider as axiomatic the proposition 
that foreign support means foreign control. We 
see that there is no difficulty in principle, at least, 
in having the people of the land advising on a 
financial committee or in having them in a 
majority on such a committee; or, in fact, in turn- 
ing over our money to a committee made up 
wholly of the people of a given land, if that seems 
best. Many western givers have accepted the 
principle that their money need not be controlled 
by those personally known to or racially kin with 
themselves, but is given to be most fruitfully used 
for the Kingdom of God. 

Making the growth of a virile independent 
church central is necessitating a scrutiny of the 
aims, methods, and outcomes of the elementary 
education carried on by missions. The mistakes 
made by our schools abroad as pointed out by the 
three educational commissions sent out by the mis- 
sionary societies of Great Britain and America are 
for the most part the mistakes of current western 
education. As a matter of fact, however, we now 
see that these schools simply have not sufficiently 
developed such attitudes as independence, self- 
reliance, ability to make choices and such skills 
as those needed in self-government and coopera- 
tion. Too often pupils have been trained in docil- 


192 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


ity, rather than in self-reliance. Uniformity and 
autocratic control have tended to the repression 
of personality. Teaching has been conceived as 
indoctrination. The development of thinking 
power in pupils has not been made a major ob- 
jective. Curricula have ignored the native heri- 
tage. The segregation of Christian children in 
residential schools has resulted in their alicnation 
from other groups of the nation. Religious educa- 
tion has often placed more emphasis on the trans- 
fer of ready-made religious ideas and beliefs than 
on growth. Western forms of worship have been 
encouraged. Insufficient foundation has been laid 
in religious matters for habits of thought which 
tend toward independent interpretation and ap- 
plication of religious truth. In other words, we 
now realize that we must begin far down the 
educational ladder if we want to get self-reliance, 
iniliative, and independence in the Church. These 
qualities can not be put on as capstones if no 
foundations for them have been laid. The next 
decade will see much conscious planning for con- 
tinuous reconstruction of curricula and methods 
from this standpoint. 


Vv 


All this indicates that in certain advanced areas 
we have entered on what may be called a fourth 
stage in mission work. The pioneer stage comes 
first when Christians are few or none at all. Next 
as a matter of history came the paternal stage 
when the churches were weak and their leader- 
ship dependent largely on the mission or the in- 


ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 193 


dividual missionary for help in various ways. The 
dangers are those inherent in benevolent 
patronage. 

The third stage may be styled that of the elder 
brother, where the Church still needs in marked 
degree the experience, background and financial 
assistance of the older Christian Churches of the 
West. In practically two thirds of China the 
leadership of the Church is still largely in the 
hands of the soreign missionary who alone receives 
converts into Church membership and administers 
the sacraments.> In the elder-brother stage it is 
generally true that missionaries come from com- 
munities of decided economic surplus to com- 
munities of decided economic deficit. Manifestly 
this is a stage that will continue at least for a 
half century in many areas. 

The fraternal stage comes fourth. Here the 
church is able to stand on its own feet. The dif- 
ference between it and a Church in the West is 
that there is a greater disproportion between its 
strength and its task of evangelizing the nation 
than is the case with the western Church. For this 
reason help is continued. But the old relations 
of child to parent are no longer possible. The 
term “mother Church” must give way to sister 
Church or brother Church. Mission funds spent in 
evangelistic work are no longer administered by 
the mission alone, but by a joint committee com- 
posed of missionaries and representatives of the 
indigenous Church. 

There seems to be no doubt that we must con- 

*“The Christian Occupation of China,” p. 296. 


194 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


sider an oncoming stage of missions—not here yet, 
but certain in the future—when each country will 
be sending, each receiving, and each calling in a 
spirit of mutuality. The fact of international 
exchange will continue, but on a different basis 
from the present. Foreign missionaries in great 
numbers will not be effective nor desired. Though 
relatively few in number, they will be highly gifted 
people, preéminently qualified to share one or 
more specific things. The anticipation of this fifth 
stage of missions should summon us to our most 
earnest, prayerful effort in these days when the 
opportunity is widespread. For leaders, return- 
ing from the most advanced Christian work 
abroad, urge us to take stock of our capacities and 
our objectives, lest our distinctive task abroad re- 
main undone when the accepted time of the present 
type of opportunity has passed away. If we 
seriously face this truth, that our time in China 
and Japan and India on the present scale and basis 
is limited, that the years of control, leadership or 
even large codperation are numbered, and that this 
end is being talked of even now, we cannot but 
pause to inquire whether we are actually making 
in the various earlier stages the contributions God 
intended us to make. 

In considering this last paragraph it should be 
carefully noted that in most areas this stage is 
not even in sight. Not only are different countries 
on the average at different stages, but different 
areas in the same country are at different periods 
of chronological development. It would be fatal 

*See page 31 ff. 


ADJUSTMENTS IN QUALITY 195 


to forget that there are great sections of non- 
Christian lands where most of the characteristics 
of pioneer work still prevail. We shall never 
rightfully understand the task abroad, much less 
interpret missions as we ought, if we lose sight of 
this fact that all areas are not at the same stage. 
Emphasis has been placed upon the more ad- 
vanced areas and stages since we are endeavoring 
to see where missions are tending. 


CHAPTER XI 
DEVELOPING CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS 


RECONSTRUCTION in missionary education in- 
volves broadening and deepening the content of 
the term as popularly conceived. This may well 
take place in at least four ways. 


I 


The universal brotherhood of children of God 
is one of the great Christian convictions—so 
common as to seem trite, and yet so rich in im- 
plication that if it were once taken seriously by 
professing Christians on this planet it would trans- 
form their world. Entrance upon this larger 
fellowship of the family of God makes bigger, 
broader, nobler men and women. To see with 
clearness the preciousness of our national heritage, 
and yet to realize one’s membership in something 
indescribably higher and greater and nobler; to 
be lifted up in Spirit and made part of the great 
world company, is an experience that thrills one 
through and through and that ushers in life on a 
new plane. 

On its international and interracial side this 
great formula means that all men are children 
of God, and hence have a common divine heritage. 

196 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS — 197 


It means that others presumably have the same 
right to their opinion as we have to ours, and that 
one must not forcibly overrule another’s habit of 
thought, principle of living, or ways of doing 
things. The larger view will make it impossible 
to judge every question from the view of the 
smaller group alone as when some lamely say that 
they must run their business in an un-Christian 
way because of their families; their nation in an 
un-Christian way because of their business; and 
in like manner the world in an un-Christian way 
because of the interests of their nations. 

As brothers in the family of God we are to 
accept individuality, and not to suppress it. We 
are to rejoice in var-ety of personality rather than 
to limit and destroy it. Universal brotherhood 
assumes universal and mutual goodwill prompting 
men anywhere to help others everywhere where 
there is need, just as Americans gave to the 
Japanese earthquake sufferers, and Japanese gave 
to the Near East Relief. Brotherhood is the 
antithesis of international and interracial jealousy, 
hostility, and distrust. Helping people to accept 
and to act upon this Christian conviction of divine 
sonship is a part of missionary education. 

A second cardinal Christian belief is the primal 
importance of world-wide coéperation in common 
constructive tasks. We believe that God intends 
us to share in His great purpose of developing a 
world-wide society of Christ-like personalities, set 
in an environment such as beings with unlimited 
possibilities should have. Sometimes it seems 
we are just at one of the great points in history, 


198 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


when we are beginning to glimpse what the great 
Painter means to portray. We do not always see 
it clearly. It comes and then fades. Even our 
leaders cannot always hold it. But we are sure 
that He wants us to see and share in the making. 
Helping people to grasp this interpretation of life 
and assisting them to develop capacity for taking 
an intelligent and effective part in the task is a 
part of missionary education. 

Some favored few gain through travel and 
intimate personal contact a feeling of respect, 
sympathy, and appreciation for other peoples. But 
for the vast majority of human beings the ex- 
perience of world fellowship can come only 
through increasing participation in the pursuit 
of world objectives. As such ends are grasped 
and made our own, world-wide fellowship deepens 
even with peoples we do not see. We grow to 
spiritual maturity as we participate in this process 
with other humans and with God. Generation by 
generation, aS we grow in the capacity to vision 
and to adopt cooperative ends, our capacity for 
fellowship with God and man will deepen. Such 
suggestions as the League of Nations and the 
World Court are not merely possible ways of 
escape from war; they may be thought of, also, 
as providing contacts in the pursuit of common 
ends that will mean greater richness of life. The 
discovery of world-purposes such as those em- 
bodied in the twenty-third article of the League of 
Nations, and the encouragement of people every- 
where to put first cooperative constructive effort 
for a new and better world is missionary education. 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS _ 199 


It is also, in part at least, what Jesus meant by 
telling us to seek first the Kingdom of God. 

With the supreme and inestimable significance 
of the fact of Christ and these two principles 
which He did so much to establish, humanity 
possesses what will make possible the achieve- 
ment of a world-wide society of suitably environed 
Christ-like personalities. The times require that 
such principles should be put in the very forefront 
of Christian teaching, and that Christians honestly 
and fearlessly face their practical corollaries and 
consequences. 

The Church has seen to it that Christianity stands 
for personal purity, for honesty, and for love of 
strangers, the uncongenial, and those in need. 
With a persistence and an emphasis never used 
before, Christians in these days should make men 
see that Christianity involves the universal brother- 
hood of children of God and purposeful, con- 
structive endeavor for world ends. The or- 
ganization of humanity for codperative associa- 
tion with mutual respect and service necessitates 
a persistent and world-wide educational prepara- 
tion of mind and spirit. The world’s public opinion 
must be so penetrated and saturated with facts 
and convictions as to make possible an intelligent 
commitment to a harmonious, a progressive, a 
Christian world order. The next quarter of a 
century presents no more claimant duty to the 
Church than the proper selection of and emphasis 
on those Christian fundamentals which constitute 
the priorities of our day.' 


: *Cf. article on “The Church and World Fellowship,” by 
A. GC. McGiffert, Religious Education, vol. 16, pp. 131-136. 


200 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


II 


Implied in what has gone before, and yet suf- 
ficiently urgent to be worthy of separate mention, 
is the common acquirement of an international 
mind. An immediately pressing task for this 
generation is the development in all lands of 
Christian personalities who have wide thoughts, 
a genuine feeling with the rest of the world and 
outlooks which include other races. Prominent 
in the thought both of leaders and of followers in 
all nations should be world consciousness, world 
outlook, world background, world fellowship, and 
world objective. This means a persistent struggle 
against the great age-long barriers raised by oceans 
and continents, language and race, tradition and 
custom, provincialism and inertia, and by man’s 
meagerness of imagination and vision. Developing 
and maintaining this world consciousness has not 
usually been a definite factor in what has been 
understood as missionary education. 

The international mind has been defined as 
“that fixed habit of thought and action which 
looks upon the several nations of the civilized 
world as cooperating equals in promoting the 
progress of civilization, in developing commerce 
and industry, and in diffusing science and educa- 
tion throughout the world.” This aspect of mis- 
sionary education definitely contemplates the 
development of a world consciousness and an 
interest in international and interracial problems 
expressing itself in a spirit of Christmindedness 
and with His dynamic of love. Whatever enables 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS — 201 


a person or a group to push back their individual 
horizons; to get an intelligent and sympathetic 
insight into other cultures; to be aware of the many 
interlinkings of people with people; to think about 
impending international and interracial problems; 
to see what solutions are offered .by organized 
religion and especially by the Christian way of 
life—whatever does these things ministers to this 
aspect of missionary education. 

The inclusion of these wider objectives in the 
term should not disturb any one, for the perusal of 
almost any one of the modern texts officially issued 
by missionary societies for study shows that an 
immense amount of space is given to instructing 
a provincial public in matters of geography, 
customs, economics, and politics. To such an ex- 
tent do mission texts and school books in Britain 
approximate each other that half the books issued 
by the United Council for Missionary Education 
are officially listed by the educational authorities 
as authorized supplementary reading in geography 
and general knowledge. Sweden, with a State 

Church, has missionary education as a compulsory 
subject in schools. Now when information such 
as is given in these missionary texts is given in 
school geography, secular magazine, and public 
lecture, why not think of this also as missionary 
education? We must enlarge our conception of 
this term to include the dissemination of world 
knowledge through every agency. 

We cannot begin this broadening process too 
soon, for American college students have shown 
a distinct resentment at “missionary education” 


202 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


being interpreted as the presentation of a restricted 
range of interest connected with the particular 
enterprise known as “missions.” With them, 
especially, mission study has shown a marked 
tendency to broaden and to include the considera- 
tion of international affairs of all kinds. Any 
question of international or interracial bearing 
which becomes a big issue is seized by the alert 
as an opportunity for education. Fortunately, 
also, the whole horizon of the man in the street 
has been indefinitely expanded as a result of the 
war. The geographical horizon of interest for 
many has at last become—to use President Wil- 
son’s word—“ultimate.” 

This means that we will recognize the part that 
can be played in missionary education by the 
common, general agencies of information. Among 
those the press stands out preéminent. The 
brotherhood of man is in no small way dependent 
on reliable and impartial information with regard 
to the farthest corners of the earth. There is a 
terrible drag on growth in international and inter- 
racial comity as long as opinions are formed 
concerning sister nations from papers that incul- 
cate racial and national animosities, and as long 
as the dailies of a great city can disseminate a 
vicious propaganda of misrepresentation against 
those who strive to teach and forward Christian 
principles of national codperation. Newspapers all 
too often carry from country to country the story 
of the crime and the disorder of the nations. Few 
are the writers who have learned the art of making 
the goodness of the world interesting to newspaper 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS = 203 


readers. Hence the spiritual development of the 
great news agencies is a matter of prime im- 
portance. The Church may not be able to develop 
great right-spirited dailics of its own, but it can 
raise up men of character and of knowledge who 
wil be able to create an atmosphere in our nations 
which will encourage a news service more helpful 
internationally. 

In the future we will pay more attention to the 
foreign news columns of our daily papers, or insist 
that there be such columns if there be none. Just 
as now one of our outstanding Christian weeklies ? 
has regularly a page from a British correspondent, 
so our wecklies of the future will doubtless have 
regular Indian, Japanese, and Chinese surveys of 
the affairs, the needs, and the accomplishments 
of their respective areas. 

More use, also, undoubtedly will be made of 
papers originating in other lands. Already the 
New York Public Library receives eighty-nine 
current periodicals from India, fifty-nine from 
Japan, and forty from China. As the demand for 
international knowledge becomes greater, smaller 
librarics throughout the land will undoubtedly 
supply something of this kind of service. 

We should expect the cinema, also, to render 
its service to the international mind. Even the 
most ignorant can catch through this agency of 
wide popular appeal an idea of the humaneness 
of life in other countries than his own. But if 
the Mexican always has a sinister, side-wise slant 
of the eye, and if the Chinese is always used to 

* The Christian Century. 


204 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


commit some sly crime, if the Hindu is always 
sensual, or if films of American family life as 
shown abroad represent it as characteristically 
immoral, seeds of international distrust are im- 
planted in impressionable people. It would help 
to create goodwill if we did more to represent the 
people of another country or race as likable. 
Some readjustment in the choice of books, also, 
is necessary. The Christian internationalist will 
not confine himself merely to what has been known 
as “missionary publications.” Samples, at least, 
of the best general literature on other lands will 
be read in order further to develop a genuine and 
intelligent conception of other countries and 
peoples. That noble Rumanian statesman, M. Take 
Jonescu, one of the finest international leaders in 
Europe, once told a friend that he considered it a 
piece of absolutely necessary intellectual hygiene 
to leave his country once or twice a year and see 
something of other nations. Not all of us can do 
this in fact. But under the guidance of expert 
authors we can be swiftly taken to the very heart 
of another nation’s life so that we may feel its 
problems and possibilities and intense aspirations. 
Similarly we will expect our colleges to develop 
more than they do now the international mind. 
Both institutions and students will be tested by the 
extent to which curriculum courses are provided 
which overcome provincialism and contribute to 
a Christian world outlook. A few colleges already 
give courses on contemporary civilization, but 
these generally confine themselves to Europe, 
ignoring the whole world of the Orient. But the 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS — 205 


desired end will not be accomplished merely by 
adding courses, nor by putting the burden upon the 
specialized Biblical subjects or missions. The old 
standard courses in sociology, economics, politics, 
literature, history, and philosophy must do their 
part by showing what they have contributed and 
can contribute to the true progress of the whole 
world. 

Dean Woodbridge, of Columbia University, 
strongly believes that language chairs in our 
schools and colleges should be the means not 
merely of teaching language and literature but of 
gaining an insight into other civilizations. Too 
often the study of foreign languages has been 
mainly a linguistic and literary accomplishment 
rather than a study of man and his ideas. The 
result has been that in spite of the funds spent 
upon departments of language study, they have 
produced almost exclusively merely teachers of 
language and literature. They have rarely pro- 
moted real knowledge of the world of foreigners. 
They have still more rarely produced men of 
affairs capable of dealing with foreign relations. 
Dean Woodbridge urges that this divorce of lan- 
guage and literature from the land and affairs of a 
people cease, so that the study of foreign lan- 
guages may involve real knowledge of what the 
foreign world is like. 

Columbia University’s Department of Chinese 
has been reéstablished with this new conception. 
This Department is asked not only to teach the 
Chinese language and literature but to consider 
such a question as what we need to kuow about 


206 | WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


China in order to make our future dealings with 
the Chinese intelligent. The interests and opinions 
of the Federal Government, the Chinese legation, 
the Chinese students among us, returned mission- 
aries and travelers, and the great corporations 
which do business in China are taken into con- 
Sideration in planning the work. 

Similarly, other universify chairs should be 
expected to make very real contributions to the 
study of the world of human affairs. Already they 
contribute to the world of philosophy, or of 
politics, or of economics. But their contribution 
should also be to the world of different peoples, 
who, on account of their differing philosophical, 
political and economical interests, create the 
problem of world coéperation.® 

It is humiliating to have a Hindu, three years 
resident in America, speak of the “astounding 
ignorance of the people regarding foreign 
countries and peoples in whom they are not in- 
terested.” It is also humiliating to have the head 
of one of the two large missionary language schools 
in China publicly testify that practically all the 
students he gets are provincial in their outlook.‘ 
The same judgment is voiced by Fletcher Brock- 
man—that veteran servant of the educated classes 
of both East and West—-when he assures us that 
at present Chinese students ask questions con- 
cerning a far wider range of interest in industry, 
social conditions, education, government, and 


*Cf. Annual Report of the Dean of the Graduate Facul- 
ties, Columbia University, 1918. 

“Report of the Foreign Missions Conference of North 
America, 1922, p. 126. 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS = 207 


religion than he had heard in America. Nor do 
they limit themselves to Chinese and far-Eastern 
questions, but are interested in modern questions 
everywhere. 

An appreciation of the international aspect of 
missionary education will cause us to value our 
opportunities for contact with ten thousand 
potential leaders of eighty nations resident in our 
colleges. We should seek much more touch with 
these young men and women, not simply in order 
to please them, but because they can change us 
and can help us to a more sympathetic and 
tolerant outlook upon the world. Some of these 
students are making invaluable contributions as 
members of study groups and forums. Many more 
of us should be entering into the thought life of 
other peoples; and in many of our communities 
it is the foreign students who afford the best 
opportunity for acquiring skill in an understand- 
ing touch with those of a different temperament, 
upbringing, race, and religion on a basis of mutual 
respect and reciprocal sharing. Our children get 
some of their most effective lessons in inter- 
nationalism when friends from across the seas 
join in the wholesome fellowship of the family 
circle. For our ideal for a world society is mean- 
ingless unless we can demonstrate its essential 
character through friendly intercourse where this 
is possible. 

“International Evenings” enable members of 
a particular country to interpret to others what 
they feel to be the truest and the best side of their 
national life. Actual face-to-face contact with 


208 © WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


these representatives does not permit us to think 
of their lands as primarily “poor and benighted” 
but as countries full of great brother peoples, ready 
to contribute their rich variety of gifts and 
temperaments to the common store, and to work 
out with us the divine purpose. 

International conferences arc another means 
of bridging the gulf between nation and nation. 
No one can estimate the value of a convention 
where delegates from small towns and rural dis- 
tricts come into actual contact with choice men 
and women of other peoples. 

Another bridge builder is international visita- 
tion. Many hundreds of really poor students in 
the high exchange countries have in the years 
since the war had the chance of making pil- 
grimages of friendship throughout Central Europe. 
Two hundred out of the two thousand students in 
one of our colleges were abroad last summer. 

A few students have gotten as far as India and 
the Far East in their visitations. One college has 
started the plan of sending junior students to a 
college in the Orient that they may come back, still 
as undergraduates, to help broadew the rest of the 
student body. A pilgrimage group of fifteen 
students from the Pacific Coast States visited 
Japan in the summer of 1924. The fact that the 
six weeks of their stay were during the most 
uncomfortable time of the year, a time of heat, 
humidity and mosquitoes, convinced the Japanese 
that these young men were ow for more than a 
lark. In a score of meetings and conferences 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS 209 


Japanese students, teachers, and professional men 
talked with these American students over the vexed 
problems of international and interracial relation- 
ships. Another student pilgrimage of friendship 
to Japan is being planned, and it is hoped that 
Japan will send her pilgrims to this country. 

There has already begun an exchange of pro- 
fessors between the Orient and the West. One 
frequently hears of a professor of chemistry, or 
English, or Bible, or household arts spending a 
year or two years in some Christian college abroad. 
When this practice of the interchange of teachers 
between the nations is increased, students will 
naturally absorb much of the information and 
many of the points of view which must form the 
basis of all intelligent missionary education. 

The Student Friendship Fund, the Women’s 
Union Colleges of the Orient, and the sister and 
brother college movement under which a score 
of American colleges have established definite 
links with some Near East or Oriental college, the 
interchange of some six hundred drawings by the 
public school children of Japan and Iowa, are 
other ways by which young people are being led 
on to a larger inclusiveness in their thought life. 
We need not here give further illustrations of the 
manifold ways in which the international mind is 
being acquired. The immediate point is that the 
term “missionary education” must be enlarged 
to include all these processes, since international 
mindedness is one of the factors of the missionary 
mind. 


210 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


Ii 


Acquainting people with what is commonly 
understood as the missionary enterprise is_ to 
many people the most obvious factor in missionary 
education. In fact, this has all too often been 
taken as its sole meaning. Even in this more 
restricted aspect of missionary education various 
kinds of reconstruction are needed. 

Various urgent reasons summon us to revise 
much of the terminology which we use. One 
demand comes from the desirability of interesting 
the man in the street who does not understand 
nor respond to our highly specialized vocabulary. 
We sometimes forget that it has been a relatively 
small, though intense group within evangelical 
Christianity, who have been interested in making 
Jesus Christ known to every human being. Within 
this circle a vernacular has grown up which is 
barely understood outside. 

For example, at a recent conference intended 
mainly for student volunteers and returned mis- 
sionaries, a stalwart man was asked, “And what 
field do you come from?” He hesitated as though 
he did not understand. “What field do you come 
from?” The meaning finally dawned upon the 
man, an intelligent army officer who has seen 
service in India and who had come with a friend. 
He simply was not used to the missionary ver- 
nacular. Such words as “adherents,” “home 
base,” “colporteur,” and the like are all good 
words and we need them. But they form a 
specialized vocabulary of the small circle and are 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS 211 


uncongenial to the university student and business 
man. 

What is encouraging, however, is that the man 
of the street is becoming increasingly interested 
in the facts and the principles which that small 
circle has most at heart. Stated as “gleanings 
from the harvest field,” accounts of the results of 
missions will be rejected by most of the modern 
press. Stated, however, in terms of our own day 
and stripped of unnecessary professional ter- 
minology, news about the making of a better world 
is being gladly accepted by many an alert editor, 
club, or board of trade. The inner missionary 
group knows that momentous changes in life and 
environment are being caused by influences 
coming directly from Jesus Christ and that still 
greater ones are possible. But if the wider circle 
is to be interested, the smaller circle must learn to 
talk in the language of our day. 

The British societies have for several years past 
appointed a man to specialize in cultivating the 
editorial and writing personnel of journalism, 
leaving them to a noticeable extent with a kindlier 
feeling, and introducing paragraphs and long 
articles in the daily press in a style congenial to 
the constituency. Both in Britain and America 
missionary agencies have broadcasted missionary 
addresses stripped of professionalism. As already 
noted, missionary societies in Sweden have suc- 
ceeded in preparing text books that have been used 
in the compulsory missionary education of the 
State schools. 

Again, the increasing deference being given to 


212 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


the opinion and point of view of nationals will 
cause home agencies to select as authors for their 
missionary study books Christians from the 
country dealt with. One such study text has been 
issued by the Student Christian Movement of 
Britain—“The Desire of India,” by S. K. Datta. 
For fourteen years it stood practically alone as a 
prophecy of this new use of authorship by 
nationals. The same, forward-looking movement 
has recently published “China Today—Through 
Chinese Eyes,” a series of essays by Chinese. The 
Missionary Education Movement in America, in 
1923, limited its new dramatic sketches on Japan 
to those written by a Japanese, and brought out a 
play written by a Chinese in 1924 after it had been 
carefully reviewed by a group of Chinese students. 
The ideal mission study book for home churches 
may in the near future have to be the result of the 
collaboration of a home committee, an experienced 
missionary, and a Chinese, or Japanese, or Indian 
author. Each of these three would have a valuable 
point of view. But our interest here is to notice 
that we will soon be seeking on a larger scale to 
enlist the authorship of nationals for study texts 
in order to embody from the first and to recognize 
throughout their point of view. 

Similarly home churches will increasingly wish 
to hear nationals as well as missionaries tell about 
the progress of Christianity in their lands. To the 
Wesleyan Centenary in England, in 1913, twenty 
nationals were brought, and they remained for six 
months visiting the churches. One of the most 
experienced workers among British students 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS | 213 


predicts that in ten years all speakers on missions 
in their colleges will be nationals. Some such 
have been extraordinarily successful in awakening 
interest. Students after hearing K. T. Paul, of 
India, speak, said “If that is the kind of leader 
India produces, I would like to go out and work 
with him.” 

As we saw in the previous chapter, missionaries 
in numbers greater than or equal to the present 
staff are still needed in every land. No one can 
say just how long this condition will last. Un- 
doubtedly changes in their type and relationships 
are right upon us now, but very likely for a 
generation the number will not be markedly 
decreased. Yet missionary education should begin 
now to prepare our minds for the fifth stage which 
will come at different times in different lands. 
This raises a serious problem in education, for 
missions in America have been inextricably as- 
sociated with the sending of men and women. 
Popular thought centers about their departures, 
letters, and return. But undoubtedly money will 
be needed for these lands of lower economic level 
long after it has ceased to be wise to transfer 
personnel from this to other lands in the present 
quantity. We send money to aid many a home 
mission community without necessarily sending 
with it our own personal representatives. Can we 
educate ourselves to do this same thing for equally 
deserving Christian communities abroad? 

Fifteen million dollars are spent annually by the 
various Boards in China. Far-seeing leaders are 
already asking whether that large sum of money is 


214 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


being spent in the best way for China; in particular, 
whether so large a per cent should go to the 
support of foreign missionaries. One sometimes 
hears those at home responsible for raising the 
budgets answer, “We must send out new mission- 
aries, for new missionaries open new channels of 
.support. How can we give largely even to the 
cause of Christian literature in China when this 
does not awaken interest among our givers?” 

The same home-centric point of view lay back 
of a remark by a secretary of one of our large 
societies, “If I should send to China the kind 
of missionaries asked for by the national lead- 
ership of China, I would have to part company 
with my constituency.” There is no doubt that 
home churches must be educated to give, not 
for what will show the greatest immediate tab- 
ulatable results in mission statistics, not for what 
will lure more money from the giving constitu- 
ency, but for intangible results which cannot 
readily be labeled and yet which may, in the long 
run, most build up a Christian constituency. This 
will require a definite and persistent program of 
education. 


IV 


Fortunately, a certain limited type of missionary 
address is becoming almost extinct. We can all 
remember talks where the main emphasis was 
placed on the strange and grotesque in other lands, 
or where the backward and ugly aspects of a given 
people were overstressed. One young British 
leader believes that missionary exhibits, on the 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS 215 


whole, are a bad thing, because they are so apt to 
emphasize the things which are odd, curious, 
different. Such addresses and exhibits are not 
untrue in actual detail, but in the proportion of 
portrayal. Their tendency is to instil an un- 
charitable and distorted view of countries known 
as mission lands. It is as the result of such early 
education that a graduate student in one of our 
seminaries was able to write: 


I wonder if all children in the United States grew 
up with the perverted view of other peoples and 
their faiths which formed my own early con- 
ceptions. Thus, I was taught that the people in 
- India and China and Japan and all non-Christian 
countries are “heathen.” I hardly supposed that 
they had real cities. It was a great surprise to me 
when I learned that the Indians could produce a 
poet like Rabindranath Tagore or the Chinese a 
patriot like Confucius. I had been taught that all 
of those heathen people would acknowledge all 
of us Christian Americans as unquestionably 
superior to them; and that they would, of course, 
seize every opportunity to make themselves like 
unto us. And to admit that any of those heathen 
religions might contain an atom of truth or any 
admirable feature—that would be utterly un- 
Christian and sacrilegious! ® 


It is among little children and “teen-age” boys 
and girls that misconceptions are being formed. 
We need more teachers who will give these ques- 
tions of international mindedness and world 
friendship their rightful place in religious educa- 
tion. In some schools instead of a mechanical 


pores by Hume, R. E., Christian Education, vol. VI, 
p. c 


216 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


handling of missions as a side issue, boys and girls 
are brought into some kind of friendly and normal 
touch with the children of other lands. This can 
be done through the worldwide Church as through 
no other agency of education. | 

The tendency to give a distorted view of another 
land is one which is quickly detected and resented 
by many of the ten thousand foreign students in 
America. Discount them as you may, their state- 
ments on this question should stimulate us to 
scrutinize our missionary propaganda in order to 
see wherein we err. Of eighteen Indian students 
consulted by the recent Commission on Foreign 
Students in America, all but four found misrep- 
resentations of their country in the American press 
and by missionaries. One who is a _ professed 
Christian, and who is eager for the spread of 
Christianity, says: 

Time and again have I had the painful ex- 
perience of hearing India-returned missionaries 
not only distort and conceal the facts, but deliber- 
ately slander the fair name of Mother India, and 
this from the pulpit! If as a Christian I bow my 
head in shame at the conduct of these so-called 
ministers of Christ, as a true and loyal son of 
India I feel within me surge a wave of indigna- 
tion, gradually crystallizing into a resolution to 
avenge the slur. I know that this is an unchristian 
frame of mind, but at whose door does the blame 
lie? Deliberate misrepresentation and unscrupu- 
lous perversion of facts have underlain the report 
of almost every missionary that it has been my 
privilege to hear in this country during the last 
four years. 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS — 217 


Another whose family was converted to Chris- 
tianity generations ago, says that: 

India welcomes missionaries from all over the 
world, but in return for her unbounded hospitality 
she expects just one thing—that the guests will 
not abuse the freedom granted to them while in 
India, and that they will be honest in the expres- 
sion given to their own people when they report 
on their return home. That single expectation of 
India has yet to be fulfilled. 


A Hindu, twenty months’ resident in the United 
States, declares that “. . . in case America should 
be represented in India in the same way as India 
is represented in this country very few Americans 
would recognize Uncle Sam.” 

Feeling this way, is it any wonder that a few go 
back and retaliate by telling of America as the 
jand where “every prospect pleases and only man 
is vile.” 

A thoughtful Christian Chinese student, now 
studying in an American institution, recently stated 
that he was afraid that many current presentations 
of missionary work were such as to transform the 
missionary movement from an agency of inter- 
national goodwill into one which engendered ill- 
will between the nations of the East and the West. 
A talented, but sensitive, Chinese student at a 
recent summer conference refused to participate 
in a Chincse play because the play took as its 
setting the old Manchu period. He felt that such 
a dramatization of the Chinese as they were in 
those days misrepresented his people. Other 
nations want us to picture them, not as they were, 


218 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


but rather as they are; and to state concerning 
any defect we mention whether it is an ebbing ora 
flowing tide upon which we look. When a plant 
is identified with a thistle it is difficult to see figs 
upon it even when they are there. 

Statements and attitudes such as these may be 
exaggerations but they represent views held by 
many of the foreign students among us. It is a 
good rule, therefore, always to speak in a way such 
that you would be pleased to find one of your 
Korean or Japanese friends in the audience at the 
close of your address. In the preparation of a 
pageant recently published, nationals from various 
lands who themselves had been converted to Chris- 
tianity were asked to witness a trial presentation 
and to criticize the parts presenting their countries 
and old religions. The need for getting their point 
of view is imperative, so that such groups might 
more often be asked to pass upon our plays, our 
moving pictures, and our mission study texts. 

Most responsible missionary societies and 
writers today are alive to the necessity for fair- 
ness and justice in educating a great home con- 
stituency with reference to other lands but many 
fear that during the decade when this education 
is going on their budgets will suffer. On the other 
hand an experienced secretary of one of our oldest 
boards, on the basis of experience, declares that 
he would be willing to submit the question to the 
test of one year of real education as against what 
he calls “sob-stuff,” representing the rest of the 
world as longing for our help and eagerly awaiting 
to be shown the way of salvation. He has found 


CHRISTIAN WORLD-MINDEDNESS 219 


that giving goes up fifty to a hundred per cent 
where a vital interest is created through frankness 
and reality of statements. But apart from its 
effect on giving, each new book, each new article 
and address should be able to win the approval 
of a fair-minded and Christian national, present 
in reality or imagination. 

Along with a careful scrutiny of their own 
literature, Christian internationalists might show 
their disapproval when the screen or stage, or 
general press hold another race up to reprobation 
or ridicule, and where other customs are cari- 
catured. The world is now too small for the effect 
of prejudice and misrepresentation to be other 
than harmful. From this standpoint missionary 
education is the fair presentation of all the facts. 

The criteria of success, therefore, in missionary 
addresses and literature will not be alone that the 
budget has been raised, or that backers for a 
board policy have been secured, nor yet that the 
required number of recruits of the right caliber 
have been obtained. There will be additional tests: 
Is the literature helping to build personalities with 
wider horizons, deeper sympathies, and more 
brotherly attitudes? Is it scrupulously scientific, 
balanced and fair, so that it can put the reader, 
as far as possible, in touch with the total situation 
with reference to the people and to the missionary 
enterprise both favorable and unfavorable? Does 
it enable the reader to face the situation in the 
light of all that is best in experience (including 
the non-Christian religions) and to see solution 
and duty in the light of all these considerations? 


CHAPTER XII 
THE INEXHAUSTIBLE REALITY BACK OF MISSIONS 


At the very heart of Christianity are certain his- 
torical facts—something that happened in Galilee. 
Through a Person God acted and revealed Him- 
self. Christianity is essentially this good news 
about our God. In Jesus Christ we begin to 
realize that the Heality which is the very 
center of the universe, other and greater than 
man, in whom we live and move and have 
our being, is best thought of as forth-streaming, 
father-like love. This conviction that a personal 
God cares enough for men to do something and 
has a far-reaching purpose for human folk has 
done more than anything else to make us conscious 
of the inestimable worth of each human being, 
however humble. | 

In the character of God who through Christ we 
have come to see is Himself constantly seeking 
man’s good, we find our greatest urge to unselfish 
service. Ministering rather than being ministered 
unto becomes a normal and essential part of the 
Christian life. Man is asked to join God in a great 
purposeful mission of redemption and of self- 
forgetting ministry. A fellowship of men of good- 
will thus begins. Individually and together they 
renew and refresh their life in the presence of a 

220 


THE REALITY BACK OF MISSIONS 221 


God who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, and 
whose purpose and character they therefore know. 
On the one hand, through worship this fellowship 
is ever drawing life and strength from the eternal 
order; on the other it is ever entering into human 
life and setting up the Kingdom of God in the world 
that now is. This fellowship is the ideal Church. 

Every living, Christian fellowship feels within 
itself an impelling urge to service—a divine send- 
ing, what we have called the missionary movement 
—as integral a part of the ideal Church as outgoing 
breath is a function of the body. Imperfect 
though they may still be, we begin to see that both 
fellowship and forth-going service are in their 
very nature essential to the realization of highest 
human values. Both Church and missionary 
movement, not necessarily as they are but as 
through our loyalty and devotion they can grow to 
be, are grounded in the very nature of God and 
man. 

When once the vision of this fellowship, eternal 
in its nature and yet here and now in time, takes 
possession of our being all differentiating and 
estranging differences between us human folk 
seem insignificantly small. The present reality of 
the Kingdom dawns on us as an inspiring revela- 
tion, and its coming in all fullness becomes our 
dominant and passionate desire. Thwarting 
conditions are seen as mountainous facts, but yet 
as mountains that can be removed because they 
stand across God’s purpose. Nowhere does a group 
seem so backward nor human nature so depraved 
but that the pursuant love of God, through Christ 


222 WHITHER BOUND IN MISSIONS 


and through those who fellowship with Him, can 
bring about a transformation. The deepest long- 
ing of the fellowship is to enfranchise each human 
being from bondage to self and to the world, and 
have each enter the wondrous association of those 
who share God’s character and God’s purpose of 
overcoming evil and redeeming human life. 

In response to this characteristic urge of Chris- 
tianity, missioners have sought every corner of the 
planet with Christ’s winsome invitation to come 
unto Him, change the direction of life, be freed 
from the past, and join the world-wide society of 
those who are committed to His purpose. These 
men of God have faced human need right across 
this world of ours, and in spite of almost insuper- 
able obstacles have built up institutions as varied 
as that need, whether economic, social, educational, 
literary, philanthropic, or religious. No one can 
see this far flung work without recognizing that it 
is the result of Christian capacity, daring, and 
vision of the highest order. It has been a glorious 
and creative outburst of the human spirit, and it 
justifies our belief that God has been and still is 
working out a mighty purpose through the 
missionary movement of the Church. What has 
already been accomplished calls us to continue 
and develop the work our fathers so well began. 


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